14 DAY TRIAL // Following Qualcomm's announcement that introduced the Snapdragon 835 processor, MediaTek unveiled two new high-end chipsets, the Helio X23 and X27.
Both are upgrades to the MediaTek Helio X20 family and bring new features and improvements that will be available for Android smartphones. There are now four MediaTek Helio X20 series chipsets that Android handset makers can choose from: X20, X23, X25 and X27.
Unlike Qualcomm and Samsung, which didn't offer too many details about the Snapdragon 835, MediaTek revealed that both its new chipsets feature the Tri-Cluster deca-core architecture (2xARM Cortex-A72 + 4xARM Cortex-A53 + 4xARM Cortex-A53) and MediaTek CorePilot 3.0 technology.
The Helio X27 is an incremental upgrade over the X25 chipset, operating at 2.6GHz for the ARM Cortex-A72 cores and 875MHz for the ARM Mali graphics processing unit. The new chipset is supposed to offer more than 20% overall processing power and significant increases in Web browsing and app launching speeds.
More importantly, both Helio X23 and X27 chipsets now support dual camera photography, which has become a standard for high-end smartphones. Thanks to the upgraded MediaTek Imagiq image signal-processing solution, both Helio chipsets can now be used in phones with dual-camera setups.
According to MediaTek, the Imagiq ISP is the first to include “color and mono cameras and depth-of-field applications into a single ISP aimed at both quality and functionality for photography.”
On top of that, the new Helio chipsets include MiraVision EnergySmart Screen power-saving technology, which can modify the smart display parameters based on the on-screen content and ambient lighting for up to 25% reduction in display power consumption.
Also, the Envelope Tracking Module available in both Helio X23 and X27 offers more power efficiency since it dynamically adjusts the output voltage based on signal strength from the power amplifier.
MediaTek Helio X23 and X27 will be available commercially soon, so we can expect the first smartphones with these chipsets to arrive in 2017.