MediaTek's new flagship Helio P90 is likely coming on December 13 - What should you expect?

Qualcomm’s SD8150 launch may be the biggest smartphone event this December but MediaTek will attempt to steal the former’s shine a bit, as reports claim the Taiwanese company is set to unveil its new flagship SoC, the Helio P90, on December 13.

Over the years, MediaTek SoCs became known for their poor efficiency and accompanying code. Since 2017, though, the Taiwanese company appears to have a massive improvement on at least one of those talking points, as it shifted its focus from making powerful SoCs—that had a penchant for heating up—to making efficient ones that got the job done. 

The company announced that it would be abandoning its at-the time flagship, performance-oriented Helio X line for the mid-range, efficiency-oriented Helio P series. While Helio P offerings have failed to compete with the premium offerings from other chipset makers, the P90 may signify the start of the tide's turn. 

MediaTek released the P70 a while ago as a direct successor to the P60, and is now set for the P90, an SoC so named because it’s intended to be positioned firmly above the P70 in the lineup, and not as just an incremental upgrade—like the initially rumored Helio P80 would imply.

According to reports, the P90 is only slightly outdone by the upcoming Snapdragon 8150 in AI benchmarks, but AI is a fickle thing and we’re not keen on judging hardware by such capabilities. On the more concrete side of things, though, we remain unsure of what the Helio P90 will offer. The new Helio P70 is built on a 12nm process and features Cortex-A73 cores, both of which are technologies two generations old in the premium segment at this point.

At the very best, we can expect the Helio P90 to be built on TSMC’s 10nm process and make the move up to Cortex-A75 cores, which would put it on par, or slightly disadvantaged, with an SoC like the Snapdragon 845—nothing to scoff at, since it will likely be much cheaper than the Qualcomm chipset.

According to the source report, while the Helio P90 will be unveiled this month, it may not make its way into the market till Q2 2019.