MediaTek is perhaps best known for being a chipset that powers many affordable Android smartphones. Today MediaTek is announcing their first family of 5G system-on-chips (SoCs) called Dimensity. The new 5G chipsets promise to bring fast speeds, advanced AI, and image processing to both premium and flagship smartphones. It’s also the first SoC to support dual 5G sim technology with aggregate speeds of up to 4.7Gbps.
“Dimensity 1000 brings the latest connectivity, multimedia, AI, imaging and gaming innovations, all tuned for 5G performance to consumers so they can expect incredible experiences with Dimensity powered 5G devices.” – MediaTek President Joe Chen.
The Dimensity 1000 5G SoC offers the world’s fastest throughput SoC with 4.7Gbps downlink and 2.5Gbps uplink speeds. The latest and fastest version of Wi-Fi 6 is also supported with the new chipset, and it offers multi-mode support for every cellular connectivity generation from 2G to 5G, as well as support for most satellite signals.
When it comes to sheer performance, the Dimensity 1000 is powered by 4 Arm Cortex-A77 cores that top out at 2.6GHz, and they are paired with 4 power-efficient Arm Cortex-A55 cores operating at up to 2.0GHz. The chipset’s Arm Mali-G77 GPU is able to stream gaming at 5G speeds without hiccups. The SoC also supports up to 16gb of RAM in a mobile device.
In addition, the SoC comes with MediaTek’s new APU 3.0 which offers double the performance of their previous generation APU. But more importantly, Dimensity 1000 brings with it lots of advanced camera enhancements, including improved autofocus, autoexposure, auto white balance, noise reduction, high-dynamic-range (HDR) and facial detection, along with multi-frame video HDR capability.
On the display front, Dimensity offers support for FullHD+ displays up to 120Hz and 2K+ up to 90Hz. Just hearing that refresh rate sounds daunting when it comes to power efficiency. Fortunately, when it comes to power efficiency, the company claims that their 5G SoC is more power-efficient than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 with its X50 modem.
But it’s not just the speed and performance improvements that Dimensity brings that will be beneficial to smartphone users, MediaTek has also iterated that because their 5G SoC is very compact with an integrated design, this will allow brands to have more space to pack in a larger battery and larger camera sensors in to their phones.
The first Dimensity powered mobile devices are expected to arrive on the market later this ear as well as in early 2020. Although there is no word on pricing, we expect that Dimensity chipsets will be found in smartphones that are priced more competitively than the likes of traditional flagships from Samsung or LG, etc.
According to MediaTek, their mobile market share has grown from less than 5% to more than 10% in the U.S. But beyond smartphones, there is a good chance that your Smart TV or smart speaker at home is also powered by MediaTek. For instance, MediaTek’s chipsets can be found inside of everything from Sonos speakers, to Vizio TVs, and Belkin routers.