The Helio P20 was announced at MWC 2016, which also saw a lot of other launches. The P20 is expected to show up on phones in the second half of this year.
The P20 is made up of an octa-core ARM Cortex A53 2.3GHz CPU which is made to be extremely power efficient. According to MediaTek, the P20 draws 25% less power compared to the Helio P10.
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Graphics on the phone are handled by the new Mali T800 GPU, which on the Helio P20 runs at 900MHz. The chip can handle up to two FHD displays, one 24 mega-pixel camera (or two 13 mega-pixel cameras), and can encode video at up to 4Kx2K resolutions @ 30fps.
READ: Elephone P9000 Review — World’s first Helio P10 phone
MediaTek have radio covered as well, with the Helio P20 having support for Cat.6 LTE, GPS (with Glonass/Beidou), WiFi a/c and Bluetooth.
You have more details here http://mediatek-helio.com/p20/
So the GPU is MP2.
It’s notable that not only it supports up to 6GB of RAM but supports LPDDR4X – it is the first to support the standard and LPDDR4X brings additional power savings by running at just 0.6V.
I think they are a little late to the architecture party, but as long as the socs are good and cheap I don’t see that as a big problem… However, I’m still more hyped for the X30, at this point it will definitely have at least a 16nm architecture… Wonder when they’ll release it (end of 2016 maybe?)
Samsung 8xA53 @ 1.7GHz and Mali T830 on 14nm is the slowest competitor.
Qualcomm’s 625 seems at least slightly bellow the P20 and arrives at about the same time.
Spreadtrum SC9860 on 16FFC with 8xA53 at 2GHz, or higher, Mali T880 MP4 , 2k display support, up to 26MP cam ,integrated sensor hub, 4k video encode/decode cat 7 LTE is already in production with devices in Q2. So it is “higher end” and arriving sooner. We’ll see how it is priced. The GPU if clocked at 800-900MHz would be appealing.
Mmm spreadtrum is really speeding up, it’s really an interesting soc (like a spiritual heir of helio x10), and it shouldn’t be priced high at all
No clue how it will be priced, it does seem that they have integrated some more higher end features but , on the other hand, they can’t charge too much with just A53 and MP4. Can’t be as cheap as SD625 but it can be in cheap enough phones.
hmmm … is SD 625 really that low-end ? i mean , most specs are pretty good !
when can we expect to see phones equipped with SC9860 and SD 625 ? and what’ll be their approx price ranges ?
SD625 is a bit or more than a bit bellow P20 and both should arrive in the second half of the year. If that’s gonna be this summer or it drags to early next year, we’ll see.
SD625 has 2GHz 8xA53, Adreno 506 (hard to guess perf but the model number is bellow 510 that is in the 650), single channel LPDDR3 @933MHz.
P20 has 2.3GHz, Mali T880MP2 @ 900MHz (they claim GPU 50% gain over P10) and up to 6GB LPDDR4X @ 1600MHz but it also has the option for single channel LPDDR3 @ 933MHz
So the 2 will compete but MTK seems at least a bit above.
They do follow P10 and SD617 so should be in a similar price range but we’ll see.
Spreadtrum, as i said, might have integrated more higher end features and they do have a GPU 2x bigger than the P20 so it should cost at least a bit more. As for timing they said volume production has already started and devices in Q2.
The P20 should shine in power consumption , especially with LPDDR4X (when this new type of RAM arrives), the Spreadtrum should be nice enough for budget gaming.
I am rather annoyed not to see some big cores in these new SoCs but , in the end, high clocked A53s are not bad and they do offer much better efficiency than big cores.
hmm… so in a nutshell , the Spreadtrum will be priced above p10 phones but below p20. and a 625 equipped device will be cheaper than the spreadtrum one … but all these appear in at least Q2 or beyond (mostly second half of the year…)
speaking of Snapdragons … the 435 looks rather peculiar to me. its an octa core , altho built on the ancient 28nm process so a kinda power hog compared to what we see now and afaik , will arrive in 2nd Half of the year … but no idea on how it’ll be priced …. possibly below the $180 range ? considering it’ll be going up against a much older (and subsequently a retail-wise , muc0h discounted) p10 , altho it has a lower clocked ram and the DSP is also lesser in specs … along with 1080p playback being the zenith…
EDIT : what the cheapest A72 phone going for nowadays ?
you got all confused.
SD625 and P20 practically replace P10 and SD617.
the 2 will compete for the same segment. I have no clue if they’ll cost 15-20$ or 10-15$. i just have no idea how big these chips are to make a guess but given the specs they got to be pretty cheap.
The Spreadtum, we’ll see. They could try to charge 35$ for it or …20$ and it is supposed to arrive in Q2, sooner than the others.
ah … thanks for clearing that up !
As for Qualcomm, they are just spamming with 28nm parts , hell knows what’s what anymore lol.
More than the “feature count”, we should take in account also companies’ policy to really figure out the final prices: i.e. usually snapdragon powered devices are priced much higher than the feature they offer! Obviously that depends on oem’s policy too.
But here we’re talking about spredtrum, a company who always struggle in the tablet’s soc market to offer the best soc possible at the lowest price (some months back they announced the cheapest chip ever, if i recall).
Now, they’re new in the smartphone’s midranger socs war, so they need to build a proper name and they know it. Plus, as i said, they tend to offer the chip at the lowest price possible…
All that considered, I think at the end of the day spreadtrum’s soc could be the cheapest in the segment, than all the rest is up to oems… In the end I believe we’ll see mostly prices below 200$ like it has been with mt6752/3
The competition between Mediatek and Qualcomm in 4G last year has been far more ferocious than the competiton between Mediatek and Spreadtrum in 3G at any point in time.
Both Qualcomm and Mediatek too huge hits on margins last year. Furthermore, adding higher end features means higher costs, a bigger die . At best they can be more aggressive but it can’t be cheaper , the others won’t let it be and the others have lower costs.