Remember what how the whole high-end Android smartphone segment was menaced by Qualcomm Snapdragon 810's overheating issues? This issue not only affected smartphone's performance but also Qualcomm's shipments and stock price. Well, it seems that Qualcomm isn't the only one suffering with overheating problems. A latest report out of China suggests that MediaTek's highest-end mobile processor offering, Helio X20, seems to be facing overheating issues.
According to the report, the deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 processor has thermal management issues, and that it overheats. Obviously, there is no official confirmation about this report, but it seems that Xiaomi, Lenovo, and HTC have cancelled their plans to release smartphones with Helio X20 chipset. The chipset features a 64-bit tri-cluster deca-core CPU, which is a combination of two Cortex-A72 cores, four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.0GHz, and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.4GHz.
Other features of the SoC includes ARM Mali-800 GPU, support for 32MP camera units or 13MP+13MP dual-camera setup, integrated sensor hub with Cortex M4 processor, 4G LTE Cat. 6 connectivity, but the memory stays at LP-DDR3 standard while others have moved onto LP-DDR4 RAM in newest chipsets. Taiwan-based MediaTek had claimed that its latest mobile SoC offers 30 percent more power efficiency while decoding videos and 40 percent while encoding it.
The MediaTek Helio X20 is the successor to the Helio X10, and will compete with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, Samsung Exynos 8890, and Apple A9 in the high-end smartphone space this year. The chipset is expected to come equipped with phones that will release after Q2 this year. MediaTek's offerings are mostly used in entry-level and mid-range smartphones, and Indian consumers generally prefer Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets over them.
