MediaTek announces the Helio P65 SoC with Cortex-A75 and A55 cores, improved AI, and 48 MP sensor support

MediaTek has launched yet another mid-range SoC, the Helio P65. As the name suggests, the Helio P65 looks to position itself between the Helio P60 and Helio P70 with improvements in some areas and downgrades in others. 

While the Helio P60/P70 used a combination of four ARM Cortex-A73 big cores and four Cortex-A55 LITTLE ones, the Helio P65 offers two Cortex-A75 performance cores clocked at 2 GHz and six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores in a single DynamIQ cluster. According to ARM, the the A75 offers a 22% improved performance over the A73 while the A55 offers an 18% boost over the A53. Memory options are limited to 4 GB or 8 GB of LPDDR3 or LPDDR4x RAM, and only eMMC 5.1 storage is supported.

How this new DynamIQ core layout will pan out for real-world usage needs to be tested but going by just the spec sheet, we can estimate that apps favoring single-core performance such as games will find good improvements but multi-core scores may take a hit. 

The GPU in the Helio P65 will raise eyebrows for sure. MediaTek is using the new ARM Mali-G52 2EEMC2 GPU clocked at 820 MHz based on the Bitfrost architecture while its older siblings use the more powerful Mali-G72 MP3. MediaTek is offering the Helio P65 for mid-range phones with FHD+ displays. The G52 supports only up to 2K 30 fps video unlike the G73 that supports 4K recording even though many mid-range OEMs don't make use of it.

The Helio P65 is equipped with a new NPU that looks to offer twice the performance of the previous two Helio chipsets and is 30% faster than the "direct competitor" for AI. Image processing is also set to get a boost with the Helio P65 supporting either a 16 + 16 MP setup or a single 48 MP camera. EIS, rolling shutter compensation, and an enhanced bokeh engine are on the offing as well. 

All standard wireless and cellular connectivity options are supported. MediaTek says that it has upgraded the inertial navigation engine of the GPS to allow for better positioning even indoors or while driving through tunnels.

So far, we've seen a handful of Helio P70 phones including the Realme U1, Realme 3, Vivo V15, and the Oppo F11 Pro. Hopefully, the Helio P65 will be embraced by even more OEMs looking to offer more features at competitive price-points.