14 DAY TRIAL // MediaTek has announced the Helio X30 chipset today, together with its release date, which will see the device launched sometime next year, possibly in Q1 2017. The chip comes with a deca-core CPU and a tri-cluster design that resembles its predecessors, the Helio X20 and Helio X25.
Last year, MediaTek introduced the Helio X20 and Helio X25 SoCs. The latter was slightly overclocked, which caused some overheating problems. In any case, the company has recently unveiled the Helio X30 chipset in China.
The chipset is built using TSMC's 10nm FinFET process, and it will contain a deca-core CPU with four Cortex A-73 cores clocked at 2.8GHz, according to PhoneRadar. On the other hand, last year's models were built on a 20nm process.
The chipset comes with a total of ten cores: four Cortex A35 clocked at 2.2GHxz, four Cortex A73 clocked at 2.8GHz, and two Cortex A35 clocked at 2GHz. In addition, the Helio X30 is accompanied by PowerVR 7XT quad-core GPU.
MediaTek's Helio X30 chipset has the capacity to support 8GB of RAM
The company has mentioned that the Helio X30 can be used for virtual reality devices, and it supports 8GB of RAM and the latest UFS 2.1 standards for internal storage. The chipset is quite powerful since it can support up to 40MP cameras with video capture at 24 fps and also a dual-camera setup.
The X30 will support 16MP cameras at up to 60 fps video and 8MP shooters at up to 120 fps. Aside from this, it has a modem that supports three-carrier aggregation and combines the three bands and supports Cat. 12 LTE. The chipset will most likely be incorporated in smartphones released in the first or second quarter of 2017.
MediaTek's Helio X25 was featured in multiple smartphones, mainly those by Chinese manufacturers like Xioami, Meizu or Elephone.
Qualcomm is one of the main competitors to MediaTek, and the company has recently released the Snapdragon 821 chipset, which comes with many improvements over the previous SD820.