LIVE FROM QUALCOMM SNAPDRAGON TECH SUMMIT 2017, MAUI: Xiaomi head Lei Jun (pictured) revealed the company is working on a premium device powered by Qualcomm’s next flagship processor, Snapdragon 845, extending a long partnership between the companies.

The Xiaomi founder, chairman and CEO said the vendor had shipped 238 million mobile devices powered by Qualcomm so far.

While details of Snapdragon 845 are currently thin on the ground – Qualcomm is expected to flesh out the information later this week – Alex Katouzian, general manager of mobile for Qualcomm Technologies said the processor will offer a “smarter, faster, safer, more immersive” mobile experience.

Enhancements in the areas of security, connectivity and imaging along with updated AI credentials, have been touted.

Katouzian (pictured, left) explained: “This chip contains billions of transistors and executes hundreds of millions of lines of code, bringing you all of the features and functions that are going to change consumer behaviour.”

“We start three years before any technology hits the market. We start thinking about future use cases and what will be valuable to the consumer, and then we work our way backwards to figure out how Qualcomm technology can enable that, can make that happen. And once we have a framework and a set of specifications, we go out to our ecosystem partners and we discuss these things with them in detail, get their input on what is important to them, what they want to do to differentiate, how they are going to add value for the consumer,” he continued.

“We go out to our mobile handset partners, we go out to mobile carriers, internet players, cloud players, independent software developers, application developers and the hardware ecosystem vendors. We gather all that input, and then go back and start developing our chipsets.”