If you’ve looked into low-end and mid-range smartphones then you may have discovered that many of them use chips from MediaTek. The company is well-known for its chips that are used in affordable devices. MediaTek today announced a new processor called the Helio A22 that’s meant to compete with the Snapdragon 400 series from Qualcomm.
The MediaTek Helio A22 is based on ARM’s Cortex-A53 cores. It combines four of them with a PowerVR GE-class GPU from Imagination. MediaTek says that this chip will be 30 percent faster and offer a 72 percent improvement in GPU performance compared to its direct alternatives. It doesn’t mention any “direct alternatives” in the press release, though.
The Helio A22 does have a maximum clock speed of 2 GHz that’s just 0.05GHz faster than the Snapdragon 429. The company’s new chip is compatible with both LPDDR3 and LPDDR4X memory types and can support up to 6GB capacity of each type.
It also brings improvements in the camera department. The Helio A22 has support for either a single sensor of up to 21 megapixel or a dual camera with 13 megapixel + 8 megapixel sensors. It even supports Face Unlock.
MediaTek has already started supplying the new chip to manufacturing partners, the Redmi 6A from Xiaomi is one of the first smartphones to be powered by the Helio A22. Expect other manufacturers to launch affordable Android smartphones powered by this chip in the near future.