MediaTek is a major player in the consumer electronics chip industry, but the company’s profile for the average American person is discreet because these chips are often found in smart speakers, set-top boxes and other appliances for which the technical specifications are not a purchase factor.
With the Dimensity 1000C present in a high-profile 5G smartphone, the LG Velvet, MediaTek returns in the smartphone headlines as this could mark the beginning of a more prominent role in an ultra-competitive market with a lot of media coverage.
This was announced by both Mediatek and T-Mobile. Also, note that MediaTek already has a substantial smartphone market share, but abroad.
The original LG Velvet is powered by a Snapdragon 765G platform, and only the T-Mobile variant features the MediaTek chip.
We have not (yet) run side-by-side tests, but we would expect both platforms to feature a similar user experience and a decent fight in the benchmarks.
MediaTek offers an alternative to Qualcomm which has a strong lead in the Android market, in the USA but also in many other places in the world.
By hedging its bets, LG puts more efforts to essentially build two software stacks for its LG Velvet phone, but that is work which could be leveraged into other smartphones as the 5G market expands.
It is always a good thing to have multiple suppliers, because they are more likely to offer the best value.
We are particularly curious to compare the photo stacks of both phones, since the hardware is identical, but the software and drivers are different. We do not get this type of opportunities often.
So far, the 5G deployment and adaption has outpaced 4G and its anything before. Carriers love 5G because it is more cost-efficient for them to serve 5G customers, and regular users experience better average speeds and coverage with 5G.