News & Reviews:   MediaTek

At the beginning of the year, we saw the news that OPPO will be manufacturing chipsets to be used on their own devices. The process of making a chipset takes a long time and great effort, so it might have to be a while before OPPO's chipset gets to meet the world. However, it is said that the company is now speeding up the process because of the US sanctions that happened between the US and Huawei.

Earlier, we have heard the news that HONOR might turn to MediaTek for the supply of chipsets as the aftermath of the US sanctions. As the parent brand, Huawei is also in a hardship that the tech giant has been cut from most of its chipset suppliers. Huawei has been using MediaTek's chipsets on some of its smartphones, and the order made to the Taiwanese chip manufacturer has even increased to 300 percent this year. However, it is said that MediaTek might not able to continue to supply chipsets to Huawei for some reason.

The US sanctions on Huawei has been happening for quite a while and the situation is definitely not getting better anytime soon. Earlier, we have also seen the news that the President of United States Donald Trump has extended the ban until May 2021. Not only the company has lost access to Google services, there are also some other problems surfacing as well such as chip supply. It is said that HONOR (sub-brand from Huawei) is planning to turn to MediaTek for the supply of 5G SoCs in the future.

The new Honor X10 smartphone was launched yesterday and it came with a mid-range 5G chipset that shows lots of promise. But having the option to choose is always good for a company and Honor seems to believe in that as well. The company seemingly hinted that it's not adverse to the idea of using more of MediaTek's 5G chipsets in upcoming devices.

MediaTek has been getting a lot of buzz this month. It was just last week when the company unveiled the Helio G85 and Dimensity 1000+ chipsets. Now, MediaTek is gearing up for another event on 18 May 2020 for the launch of another Dimensity series chipset.

Not only the competition between smartphones is intense nowadays, the manufacturers that provide chipsets for the devices are also required to keep up with the needs of the market. Today, MediaTek has launched an upgraded version of the Dimensity 1000 chipset and it's called Dimensity 1000 Plus (just like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 and 855 Plus), and there are a lot of improvements making it strong enough to compete with the others.

Some may have been surprised when Xiaomi unveiled its new Redmi Note 9 series last week, as it came with a new Helio G85 chipset from MediaTek. The company has now unveiled the details behind its new chipset, which is geared towards mobile gaming. This chipset is essentially an upgrade of the Helio G80, with a few extras on top of it.

Ah, MediaTek. Our last reported news about them wasn't so pleasant due to manipulating benchmark scores with a few selected chipsets. Despite that, the company is still planning to unveil a new 5G chipset on 7 May 2020. The poster's tagline translates as "5G all-inclusive" and it's said to be made for mid-range smartphones.

Just last week, it was reported that MediaTek was caught cheating in benchmarking tests. Despite that, it probably won't stop benchmark boosting which is unfortunately common in the smartphone industry. To deal with this issue, UL Benchmarks announced that over 50 smartphones powered by MediaTek chipsets have been delisted once and for all. 

This time around in TechNave NewsBytes realme pats itself on the back for more achievements while Huawei, Intel and LG contribute to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. Shopee and MDEC chip in for SMEs and Gigabyte and Aorus show off new laptops. 

Other news comes from Double Eleven, Micron, OPPO, MediaTek, DingTalk, Lenovo, Red Hat, SK Magic, GoPayz and Canon. In this TechNave NewsBytes #6 our special focuses on 18 things you really didn’t know you could do on your Apple iPhone.