The chipset will be known as the WiseFone 7550S and is expected to be a “true” octa-core processor. According to the rumors, production is well on its way and could debut as soon as February, just in time for MWC 2014. Unfortunately not much is known about ZTE’s own chipset for now, but word has it that it will use less power compared to the likes of the NVIDIA Tegra 4 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. It will be interesting to see how ZTE’s “true” octa-core chipset performs. Back in 2013 Samsung announced their own brand of octa-core chipsets which used the big.LITTLE technology where only four out of eight cores are used at once, but will swap between the sets of cores depending on how much power is needed.
The difference is that companies such as MediaTek have released octa-core chipsets which will use all 8 cores at once, which is presumably what ZTE is trying to do with their WiseFone 7550S. In any case take it with a grain of salt for now, but hopefully we will learn more about ZTE’s efforts in the upcoming weeks.