Now MediaTek might be a known smartphone chip manufacturer. But it doesn’t have that long of a history. And the company only makes chips for budget and mid-range smartphones. The Helio P60 and Helio P70 are the most popular chips that the company makes which we see in mid-range smartphones. But with their latest release- MediaTek Helio P90, the company aims to bring flagship level power into mid-range smartphones.
The Helio P90 launched in China very recently eight-core and focuses on achieving the AI level performance found in flagships. It claims that it can have four times the AI performance than that of the P60 and P70. And sitting below the company’s X-series chips, it seems to be targeting Qualcomm Snapdragon 700 series. But with AI capabilities found in the likes of Snapdragon 845 and Kirin 980!
MediaTek Helio P90 Overview
The Helio P90 is built on a 12 nm architecture while others are going 8 nm. But, it still is a mid-range processor. It has an eight core architecture, consisting of two 2.2 GHz Cortex A75s and six 2.0 GHz A55 cores. It also packs the IMG 9XM-HP8 GPU, which can provide up to 50% upgrade in graphics processing over the P70.
There’s also the AIA (Artificial Intelligence Accelerator ) that joins two Application Processing Units (APUs). The APUs are the ones that deal with the AI side of tasks on the phone, while the AIA performs the common AI features, for better efficiency. This is usually seen in high end smartphones, and to have it in mid-range devices is a bit unusual.
Keeping the lot of technical jargons aside, the P90 is capable of enhanced image processing from the cameras. It’s image processing capabilities can equate to even the likes of flagship phones like the Huawei P20 Pro, and it could even be better!
In layman’s terms, the P90’s image processing abilities can track full body movement – not only faces, which is great for capturing videos, or building 3D avatars or such apps. It also has enhanced depth perception that can generate real-time bokeh effects in stills and videos. The depth perception also means better face detection, in both photography and biometric security as well.
The chip will be able to support dual cameras with up to 24 MP and 16 MP. It can also support capturing 4K videos at 30 fps. In addition, it can also be used for features like better beautification, improved automatic exposure, real-time photo / video enhancements, multiple object recognition and AI noise reduction.
The Helio P90 might appear on mid-range phones in the first half of 2019. With this, we won’t be surprised if mid-range phones start providing more value for money than flagships even.
