MediaTek has officially announced the Helio G90 Series processor, which it hopes will supercharge the next generation of gaming-centric smartphones.
Combining the latest CPU and GPU tech, the G90 is the first in MediaTek’s new gaming system-on-a-chip line-up and will hope to better the standard Snapdragon processors currently embedded in phones like the ASUS ROG Phone and the Xiaomi Black Shark, while potentially bringing down the costs.
Tailored specifically for gamers the series 90 promises ultra fast memory, massive AI performance and enhanced power via the MediaTek HyperEngine game technology that tunes the smartphone for optimum performance.
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The company is touting fast response times and low latency for overall smoother gameplay, whether you’re putzing around or enjoying a marathon session in demanding apps like PUBG or Fortnite.
So what are we working with here? Well, the octa-core chipsets use Arm Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 chips and are paired with the Arm Mali – G76 3EEMC4 with speeds of up to 800MHz. Continuing with the nitty gritty, it offers It comes with 10GB of LPDDR4x and up to 2133MHz memory. There’s a large L3 cache and the promise of speeds of up to 2.05GHz.
There’s also support for HDR10 with 10-bit colour depth for enhanced visuals on compatible smartphone displays, dual-band Wi-Fi for enhanced speeds and reduced latency. It’ll also dynamically switch between wi-Fi and LTE in just milliseconds if signal degradation is detected.
However, it doesn’t look as if the chip will be part of the ROG phone 2 or other pending gaming centric phones. The second ASUS Republic of Gamers-branded phone is set to include an enhanced version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor rather than a gaming centric chip.
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In the future, G-Series chips line-up could bring down the cost of premium gaming smartphones. MediaTek is known for being a budget phone chip provider – meaning we would expect this to also apply to its gaming phones. While there may be a premium for enhanced gaming performance, it can be expected that G-Series phones would come below the price of most of the gaming phones we’ve already seen. For example, the Asus ROG Phone first retailed at around £800 RRP. Devices housing MediaTek processors usually come in around the £300-£400 mark.
It will be interesting to see what the first gaming phone using the MediaTek’s new G-Series will be. The current range of gaming phones has proven to be a success – here at Trusted Reviews, we thought the original Asus ROG Phonewas a gem.
Our four-star review said: “If you’re a regular person, that just does the odd bit of casual Candy Crush, the ROG Phone is complete overkill. If, however, you’re the sort of person that salivates at ridiculously over the top products like the ROG GX800 and Acer Predator 21 X, you’ll probably love it”.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
