The first smartphone with deca-core CPU is Elephone P9000, costs $499

MediaTek's high-end deca-core Helio X20 chipset is set to make a debut in mid-October housed inside the Elephone P9000. The Chinese smartphone is expected to debut on October 20 with $500 price tag.

Meizu MX5 pictured in the wild !

As the rumor has it, the Meizu MX5 is going to premiere at a press event on June 30, but this is yet to be confirmed by the manufacturer. And while we are waiting for some official news on the flagship we saw the Meizu MX5 leak with specs, live pictures and even some (dreamy) bezel-less renders.

MediaTek unveils 10-core Helio X20 processor

Helio X20 Core Config

After quad, hexa and octa-core processors, Chinese chip-maker MediaTek has now unveiled a 10-core or deca-core processor in the form of the new Helio X20 (aka MT6797).We have seen the benchmarks and even a comparison against Qualcomm's  best Snapdragon 810.

Mediatek shows how its new MT6797 Helio 20 compares to the Snapdragon 810

Mediatek’s latest chipset, dubbed the MT6797 Helio 20 is almost ready to hit consumer markets and the Chinese company is already promoting its new silicon. With the chip, the manufacturer hopes to build on its recent success in the mobile market and secure more supplier contracts, both with local and international brands.Helio series will be the brand that Mediatek will use,much like Snapdragon used by Qualcomm.

In order to give prospective buyers a clearer picture of what the MT6797 Helio 20 SoC has to offer, Mediatek has pit it up against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 in a comprehensive stats comparison chart. As it turns out, the new MT chip has a lot to offer and has a few significant improvements over its predecessors.

It is built using a 20nm manufacturing process, just like the Snapdragon 810, which allows for better overall performance to be achieved. The Helio 20 employs a Tri-Cluster setup with a total of 10-cores. This, of course, is all in pursuit of better resource management and improved power-efficiency. The aforementioned set of cores includes four Cortex A53 chips, clocked at 1.4GHz, another four, running at 2.0GHz and two Cortex A72 cores, which can be clocked between 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz. This means that the MT6797 Helio 20 will be employing the most powerful cores ARM currently has to offer over the Cortex A57 chips, found in the Snapdragon 810.

This could, potentially provide major performance gains, but also poses a serious heat-management challenge, something the Snapdragon 810 is still battling with. But, there is a lot more to a chipset and its overall performance than pure computing speed. Memory plays a huge role and mediate was straight-forward enough in admitting that the MT6797 Helio 20 still relies on slower LPDDR3 modules, as opposed to the LPDDR4, employed by Qualcomm. We will just have to wait and see if this takes a big toll on performance.

Graphics in the Helio 20 also look quite promising. The SoC comes with an ARM Mali T880MP4 700mHz GPU, which promises some serious pixel-pushing power. Sadly, though, the maximum screen resolution is still unchanged at 2560 x 1600 pixels, whereas the Snapdragon 810 can happily put out 3840 x 2160 pixels.

Camera support on the MT6797 has received a lot of attention. the chip is capable of supporting up to 25MP. It also offers super slow motion video and Native 3D 2.0 for three-dimensional stills. Naturally, 4K support is present for both recording and playback, now, with the addition of HDR.

Overall, the MT6797 Helio 20 stacks up quite well against Qualcomm’s “top-dog”. It is wort noting, however, that Mediatek is still stuck with Cat-6 LTE, while the Snapdragon 810 has the significantly speedier Cat-9 at its disposal. This, however, might not be huge drawback for both smartphone manufacturers and end users, especially in less-developed markets, where LTE coverage is still spotty, at best. If Mediatek manages to set a competitive price mark for the Helio 20, the SoC has every chance to make it big both in China and abroad.

As far as availability goes, the new MT6797 Helio 20 should start shipping to manufacturer in the summer and we can expect to see the first devices hit user markets by late autumn or early winter.

Upcoming MediaTek Helio X20 SoC breaks 70k on AnTuTu benchmark and is a 10 core SoC

We now know a little more about the upcoming MediaTek Helio X20 SoC. According to reports, the 10-core chip will have two 2.5 GHz Cortex A72 cores, along with four 2 GHz Cortex A53 cores and four 1.4 GHz Cortex A53 cores. Sounds impressive? That’s not the half of it. Leaked images suggest that the SoC scores over 70,000 on the AnTuTu Benchmark, which is unheard of from a mobile SoC till date. Even the Nvidia Tegra series doesn’t go up that high.

The Helio X20, also known as the MediaTek MT6797 SoC, is said to offer a 40% boost in performance compared to the Helio X10 chip. This is a feat in itself, since the Helio X10 has already proven itself to be a better SoC than the Snapdragon 810. The MT6797 uses MediaTek’s own Tri-Cluster CPU Architecture. The Cortex A53 cores will use the big.LITTLE architecture, which accomplishes power and battery efficiency. It will be produced using the 20nm process and will provide support for LTE-A/Cat 6 connectivity, which provides data transfer speeds of 200 Mbps.

The Helio X20 is expected to be mass produced by the end of the year. This means that the next generation of flagships may be powered by this processor.

The smartphone SoC market has taken somewhat of a turn this year. While Qualcomm still retains massive market share, its flagship Snapdragon 810 SoC hasn’t quite received the accolades its predecessors did. In addition, the American semiconductor firm has received more competition from both MediaTek and Intel. The biggest example of the Snapdragon 810’s failure though is in the fact that Samsung dropped it, opting for its in-house Exynos 7 Octa SoC for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. Even Taiwanese HTC has paid less attention to its flagship HTC One M9, launching the Helio X10-powered One M9+ in markets like China and India