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What US ban? Pura 70 teardown shows a more self-reliant HUAWEI
- A new teardown of the Pura 70 Pro has revealed that HUAWEI is using more Chinese suppliers.
- The most notable change is the switch to locally packaged storage from South Korean-sourced chips.
A trade ban has forced HUAWEI to be more self-sufficient if it hopes to keep producing smartphones. The manufacturer already turned heads when it launched the Mate 60 Pro late last year, featuring a 5G-enabled in-house chipset. Now, it looks like a teardown of the Pura 70 series reveals HUAWEI’s efforts at self-sufficiency too.
A teardown of the Pura 70 Pro commissioned by Reuters has revealed that the company is using more Chinese suppliers this time. The most notable new, domestically made component is the NAND storage. The outlet reports that the storage was likely packaged by HUAWEI’s HiSilicon chip division.
This would be a notable change from the Mate 60 Pro, which was found to use storage from South Korea’s SK Hynix. The Korean company stated at the time that it wasn’t doing business with HUAWEI. The statement suggested that the storage chip was from the Chinese manufacturer’s existing stockpile of components. The Pura 70 Pro’s DRAM chip was still made by SK Hynix, though.
The Pura 70 Pro teardown also reports that the phone is powered by an in-house, 7nm Kirin 9010 processor. The name is in line with previous claims out of China.
“While we cannot provide an exact percentage, we’d say the domestic component usage is high, and definitely higher than in the Mate 60,” said Shahram Mokhtari of iFixit, who conducted the teardown for Reuters.
This news also comes a day after it emerged that the US Department of Commerce revoked Intel and Qualcomm’s export licenses to HUAWEI. Intel’s revoked license means the pressure could be on for HUAWEI to become more self-sufficient in its PC business too.