It’s been quite some time since we have been waiting for Mediatek’s Helio X20 chipset. Apart from being the world’s first 10-core processor, recent benchmarks have shown impressive performance from the chip, at least on paper. So, we are all excited to see the chip in action, in order to catch a glimpse of its real world performance. However, we may have to wait for a few more months more to see Helio X20 powered device. According to the latest rumors, the smartphone powered by the chip could have been delayed because of overheating issues.
Overheating is not something that either Mediatek or everyday consumers would like to hear about the world’s first 10-core chip. However, according to a source from Weibo, Helio X20 has some overheating issues and many notable manufacturers have dropped projects based this chipset. The source has mentioned three big names, Xiaomi, HTC and Lenovo who have cancelled Helio X20 based smartphones.
Since this could turn out to be potentially disastrous for Mediatek, we would like to advise you to take this rumor with a pinch of salt. Although the source has given us some good information in the past, we can’t be entirely sure of this rumor. So, before making conclusions, it’s always better to wait for more concrete information.
Coming back to the issue, we would like to note that Helio X20 uses TSMC’s 20nm process. In case you remember, even Snapdragon 810 was using this process, which was plagued with the same overheating issue. Could there be a connection? We can’t be sure of that yet. Another thing to note is that this is the world’s first chip with a tri-cluster design. This is something that hasn’t been tried on a smartphone chip yet, so it would be interesting to see how well the chip is optimized to prevent overheating and improve efficiency.
Anyways, we will be keeping a close watch on the upcoming Helio X20 smartphones. And we are hoping that it doesn’t overheat like the Snapdragon 810!
We may probably see the first Helio X20 powered smartphone at MWC 2016, so stay tuned.
