In the race for the top flagship chipset in the market, MediaTek was left behind this year. Processors from Samsung and Qualcomm have really taken performance to a whole new level, which is why 2017 is going to be a very important year for the Taiwanese chipmaker. However, it looks like things haven’t started too well for its flagship chipset, the Helio X30, which was just announced a few weeks back.

According to a well-known tech personality on Weibo, Helio X30’s market reaction hasn’t been very positive so far. In fact, he revealed that the three major smartphone companies in China namely, Huawei, OPPO, and Vivo are not going to use this chipset in 2017. Huawei’s lack of interest in Helio X30 would be understandable, given its increased focus on its own Kirin chipsets, but it’s said that both Vivo and OPPO (the two fast-growing smartphone companies in China today) are not interested in the chip, which is surprising. Even Taiwan’s own HTC isn’t willing to go with this top MediaTek chip. So, MediaTek may eventually have to rely on companies like Xiaomi and Meizu to ship a decent amount of Helio X30 processors. It’s worth noting that an insider has already revealed that Meizu’s flagship of 2017 would be powered by this MTK flagship processor.

On paper, the Helio X30 looks like a powerful chipset. First of all, it is built using the super efficient and the latest 10nm manufacturing node, joining the likes of other top flagship processors of 2017. Thanks to its two Cortex A73 cores for top-end performance, MediaTek claims that the performance increases by up to 43% as compared to its predecessors. Further, the power consumption reduces by as much as 53%.

RELATED: MediaTek Announces Two New High-End Chips: Helio X23 & X27

It looks like Helio X30’s start hasn’t been pretty, with this news and then the recent alleged benchmark of the chipset showing sub-standard scores. While it’s too early to say whether Helio X30 will be successful, what I would like to see is the true performance of the deca-core architecture unleashed. MTK really needs its top flagship processors to perform well in 2017.

What do you think?

The post MediaTek Helio X30’s Market Response Isn’t Very Positive: Huawei, OPPO & Vivo May Not Use it appeared first on Gizmochina.

Smartphone chip makers are always on the move, improving their chipset with more powerful offering and reduced size in the face of demands for smartphones that consume less power and are are capable of seamlessly fast performance. Huawei recently released the Kirin 960 flagship processor that benchmark tests have shown to be superior in performance to its present contemporaries, yet the company is rumored to be working on a Kirin 970 chipset.

According to latest media reports in Taiwan, the next generation Kirin 970 will be Huawei’s first to be built on the TSMC 10nm process. The Kirin 970 is said to likely still be on an octa-core architecture but will integrate a baseband with support for Cat. 12 global LTE. The present Kirin 960 chip is composed of a quad-core Cortex-A73 chip, another quad-core Cortex-A53 chip and an octa-core Mali-G71 GPU. The Kirin 960 was however built on TSMC 16nm process and it comes with a wonderful CPU performance but the GPU cannot perform at full capacity.  So a switch to the 10nm process is said to greatly reduce the heat and allow full extraction of the GPU performance.

Read More: Full Details of Huawei Kirin 960 System-on-Chip

In building the Kirin 970 on the 10nm process, Huawei is following the trend, catching up with would-be early starters like Qualcomm which just announced the Snapdragon 835 processor built on Samsung’s 10nm manufacturing process and to debut in the first quarter of next year on the Galaxy S8. MediaTek is also out with its Helio X30 chip built on TSMC 10nm process and to debut in the first quarter of next year also. MediaTek is also billed to release an Helio X35 chip within the first half of 2017 which would upgrade to provide Cat. 12 LTE band support.

The post Huawei Kirin 970 Rumored to Feature TSCM 10nm Process, Cat. 12 LTE Support appeared first on Gizmochina.

Mediatek announced the next generation Helio X30 chipset a couple of weeks back. We also got some important details about the upcoming chipset like its architecture and GPU. Now, Taiwanese media seems to have more details on the new Helio X30 and X35 chipset.

Like expected, the Helio X30 chipset is said to be manufactured on TSMC’s 10nm process. Considering that the Helio X20 was built on 20nm process, this is a much-needed upgrade for the new age chip. It is said that MediaTek first planned on using TSMC’s 16nm manufacturing node for its new chips, but after considering the stiff competition from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon range, it decided to use the much more advanced and efficient 10nm process.

It is also said that the production and design of the new chip is on schedule and the chip should enter mass production sometime by the end of this year / early 2017. So, if you were expecting to meet this new Cortex A73 Artemis powered chipset, then your wait will easily extend to mid-2017.

As for the Helio X35, like this year, expect the difference to be in the maximum frequency. According to the company, the Helio X30 will come with 2 x Cortex A73 Artemis cores clocked at 2.8GHz, 4 x Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.2GHz and 4 x Cortex A35 Cores clocked at 2.0 GHz. Even the GPU is upgraded, now using PowerVR 7XT quad-core GPU chip. Helio X35 should use the same architecture but clocked at a higher frequency. Now, considering that Helio X30 is already clocked at 2.8GHz, can we expect 3GHz on the X35? Also, it will be built on the same efficient 10nm process as the Helio X30.

There’s still a lot of time for the official launch of an Helio X30 powered smartphone, and things might change to a certain extent during this period. So, stay tuned to gizmochina as more details about these upcoming chips emerge in the next few months.

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