Mediatek Helio G25 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

Mediatek Helio G25

The Mediatek Helio G25 is an entry level ARM SoC for smartphones (mainly Android based) that was introduced in late 2020. It is manufactured in a 12 nm FinFET process and is equipped with 8 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores divided in two clusters. A performance cluster with 4 cores clocked at up to 2 GHz and a efficiency cluster clocked at up to 1.5 GHz. Compared to the similar Helio A25, the G25 clocks the GPU (+50 MHz) and the CPU cores higher (+200 MHz).

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a LTE Cat.4 modem, a LPDDR3-933 / LPDDR4-1200 / LPDDR4x-1600 memory controller, a IMG PowerVR GE8320 graphics card and a 1080p30 video de- and encoder (H.265 decoding, H.264 encoding).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 625

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 (SD625) is a mid-range octa-core SoC with eight ARM Cortex-A53 cpu cores at up to 2 GHz, an Adreno 506 GPU, a DDR3L-1866 memory controller and a X9 LTE (Cat 7, 4G+, 300 Mbps down, 150 Mbps up) modem. Furthermore, the chip supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1. It is manufactured in 14nm FinFet. The processor performance should be similar to a HiSilicon Kirin 650, which also offers 8 Cortex A53 cores at up to 2 GHz. However, due to the modern manufacturing process, power consumption and throttling should be better with the Snapdragon 625.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 (SD439) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. Compared to the older Snapdragon 435, the 439 is now manufactured in the current 12nm FinFET process and offers higher clock speeds of 2 GHz of the eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores (compared to 1.4 GHz). Wifi (now ac Wave 2 / Wifi 5) and Bluetooth (v5) were also updated, however the GPU still is the rather slow Adreno 505 and the LTE modem was even downgraded to a X6 with only Cat. 4/5 (max. 150 Mbps download, 75 Mbps upload).

Thanks to the higher maximum clock speed, the performance of the Snapdragon 439 mobile platform can reach the old Snapdragon 625 (also 2 GHz with 8x Cortex-A53). However, there is still a big gap to the SoCs with bigger performance cores.