MediaTek has big plans for 2020, which includes not just a re-entry to the flagship space but also bringing 5G to mid-range smartphones.
MediaTek used to be a household name for budget smartphones but saw its market usurped by other manufacturers. That started changing this year, with the launch of the gaming-oriented Helio G90T chipset, which also powered the powered Redmi Note 8 Pro by Xiaomi. The coming months saw the announcement of the Dimensity 1000 series, which was an even more powerful chip with an integrated 5G modem. The first wave of Dimensity 1000 powered smartphones will come in early 2020.
The new MediaTek Dimensity 800 will join the 5G SoC family as a slightly more affordable chipset targeted at mid-range smartphones. It will be below the Dimensity 1000 and the Dimensity 1000L chipsets in terms of computing power. One can expect it to compete with the Huawei Kirin 800 series, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 series chipsets.
The technical specifications weren’t detailed at the MediaTek Product Communication Conference in China. Still, we know that it will be powered by the Helio M70 5G modem which can potentially attain throughput speeds of 4.7Gbps downlink and 2.5Gbps uplink, and support both SA and NSA standards. Graphics duties on the Dimensity 800 are likely to be handled by the Mali-G77 GPU. It implements a new “Valhall” architecture, which can be customized to have anything between 7 to 16 shader cores.
MediaTek's comeback
With multiple smartphone manufacturers looking to ship 5G smartphones in 2020, MediaTek’s Dimensity lineup is well-positioned to appeal to many of them. The Dimensity 800 will hit markets in Q2, with partners including Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo and even Huawei. Perhaps we will hear more about it at CES 2020 or MWC 2020.
