Just a week after MediaTek announced the Helio P23 and Helio P30 processors, news of the Helio P40 have started to surface.

Insider report from Taiwan’s industrial chain says MediaTek will be changing its strategy with respect to the Helio P40. Instead of its usual strategy of loading its processors with more cores, it will be cutting back on them.

Mediatek Helio

The source says the Helio P40 will feature a hexa-core design instead of octa-core like its predecessors. Two of those cores will be high-performance Cortex-A73 cores and the remaining four will be Cortex-A53 cores. The chip itself will be built using the 12nm design process.

Unfortunately, no information was provided about its GPU. We hope the news about the GPU, when it surfaces, is equally exciting.

The Helio P40 is expected to take on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 mobile platform, which is the uncrowned king of the mid-range category. MediaTek is said to be in talks with OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, Gionee and the rest of the big players to sign up for the processor.

READ MORE: MediaTek Forced To Cut Helio P23 Prices To Take On The Cheaper Snapdragon 450

The Helio P23 and Helio P30 are expected to start showing up in devices starting next quarter. Taking that into consideration may translate into a Q4 20117 announcement for the Helio P40 and a Q1 2018 for arrival in the market.

(Source)