A couple of weeks back, an anayst from China said that many flagships this year will be powered by the Snapdragon 652 chip instead of the top-end Snapdragon 820. There were two major reasons for this, one being SD652 is powerful enough for the upper mid-range market. The second reason was that SD820 is very costly, which made sense for the cheaper SD652 chip to be used in more devices for keeping the price low.
At that time, we wondered what could be the approximate price tag of SD820. Now, we may have a figure. According to new information, the Snapdragon 820 chip is priced around $70. In comparison, Mediatek’s top-end chip, namely the Helio X20 costs less than half of this figure. The wholesale price of X20 is reportedly only around $30.
We knew that the Helio X20 was cheap, but being less than 2x cheaper than SD820, it makes sense for manufacturers to include this chip inside upper mid-range flagships. According to initial benchmark results of the X20, it manages to reach around 90K on AnTuTu which is pretty good considering its cheap price tag. So, the Helio X20 could be ideal for affordable flagships. No wonder, LeEco decided to use this chip inside one of its upcoming Le 2 variants.
Now, things make better sense. MTK has Helio X20 for upper mid-range flagship and if you are looking for something even powerful, then there’s the newly announced Helio X25 chip. And if you want the best performance and are willing to shell out a few hundred bucks more, you can get a Snapdragon 820 based smartphone. To remind you, it is said that Le 2 does have a SD820 version.
So, what do you think? Will you go with a Helio X20 powered flagship or will you be ready to shell out more for SD820?
