Taiwanese (mid-range) chip maker MediaTek has been on a roll lately, announcing their G90 series of gaming chips back in July with a new 5G chip about to drop at the MediaTek Summit on November 26. The company's upcoming 5G chips will cover both high-end and mid-range devices with prices starting at around $300. That's quite a feat for the burgeoning 5G tech with devices typically pushing $1,000 or more.
These initial 5G chips are based on the Helio M70 modem and will launch in early 2020. Promotional materials show a designation of MT6885Z, which is the higher-end chip built on the 7nm FinFET manufacturing process for affordable flagship partners like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo. Specs should include ARM Cortex-A77 cores and Mali-G77 GPU cores (high quality streaming and gaming), sub-6 GHz frequency support (download speeds of 4.7Gbps) and third-generation AI processing engine. Support for both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) 5G architectures will be standard. As for cameras, we're looking at support for up to 80MP stills and 4K 60fps video. It's rumored that the Redmi K30 series will be the first affordable 5G device with the new chip.
The rumored MT6873 is designed for the mid-range market with devices in the $300 range, featuring the same 7nm FinFET process and Cortex-A76 cores. It's also expected to be 25% smaller than the aforementioned MT6885. However, while the MT6885 is already in mass production, the MT6873 isn't expected to hit that stage until the second quarter of 2020, with a release by the end of next year.
MediaTek's future plans may include a shift to TSMC's 6nm process with four different designs supporting millimeter wave. But that's still a ways off.
source: GSM Arena
