Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 vs Mediatek Helio G96

Qualcomm Snapdragon 730

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 (SD730 Mobile Platform) is a fast mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It integrates eight cores (octa-core) divided into two clusters. A fast performance cluster contains two ARM Cortex-A76 cores clocked at up to 2.2 GHz and a power efficiency cluster with six small ARM Cortex-A55 cores at up to 1.8 GHz. Depending on the workload only single clusters or all cores can run at different clock speeds.

The chip includes a range of other features like a fast X15 LTE radio (800 Mbits Cat 15 download, 150 Mbps Cat 13 upload), one of the first Wi-Fi 6 wireless radios (802.11ax), satellite positioning (GPS, QZSS, GLONASS, SBAS, Beidou, Galileo), USB-C 3.1, Spectra 350 ISP, Hexagon 688 DSP, H.265 4K30 video en- and decode, an LPDDR4X-3733 dual-channel memory controller and a Adreno 618 Grafikkarte.

The Snapdragon 730 is manufactured in the modern 8 nm process at Samsung.

Mediatek Helio G96

The Mediatek Helio G96 is a mainstream ARM SoC for smartphones (mainly Android based) that was introduced in 2021. It is manufactured in a 12 nm FinFET process and is equipped with 2x big ARM Cortex-A76 cores with up to 2.05 GHz and 6x small and power efficient ARM Cortex-A55 cores (max. 2 GHz) in two clusters (bigLITTLE). The chip integrates an ARM Mali-G57 MC2 (two cores) clocked at up to 950 MHz. Compared to the similar Helio G95, the G96 offers a slower GPU but supports 120 Hz displays (G95 90 Hz).

Furthermore, the integrated LTE modem supports Cat-12 600 Mbps download and Cat-13 150 Mbps upload speeds. Wi-Fi 5 is also integrated (a/b/g/n/ac). The memory controller supports LPDDR3 and LPDDR4x with up to 2,133 MHz with up to 10 GB capacity.