The Helio P70 makes a visit to Antutu, trades blows with the Kirin 960

Details of the Helio P40 and P70, MediaTek's impressive upcoming mid-range SoCs, surfaced a few weeks ago, showing specifications that promised performance values similar to the Snapdragon 636 and Kirin 960 respectively. The Helio P70 has made its way over to AnTuTu and it sure delivers on that promise, as it posts scores even higher than those of the Kirin 960.

The Kirin 960 itself is no slouch—it powered 2016 Huawei flagships like the Mate 9, and when properly optimized, like on the Honor 9, actually gives the Snapdragon 835 a run for its money. That said, it's impressive that the Helio P70 outdoes it, as the P70 is just a mid-range (sub-premium at most) flagship.

Going by the AnTuTu listing, the P70 registers a total score of about 157,000, which is above the pay grade of the average Snapdragon 821 device but slightly under the highly-optimized OnePlus 3T, and the Kirin 960's 148,000 score. It also outdoes both the Helio X30, MediaTek's flagship SoC of 2017, and the much-lauded Snapdragon 660.

In terms of raw performance, the Helio P70 posts some absolutely ridiculous figures. Its CPU score is so high, in fact, that we're almost sure the entire thing may be false. In the CPU department, it records a score of just under 74,000. For some perspective, the Kirin 960 at its best does just about 35,000, and the Snapdragon 835 goes as far as 39,000. There is, well, no logical explanation for the P70 achieving those scores with its core setup, so we can just chalk that up to AnTuTu being wonky, or the scores being facetious. Geekbench is a better judge of performance, in any case, so we’ll be on the lookout for an appearance on that benchmark.

Things are more viable on the graphical side of the fence, as the P70 records a score of about 30,000, much worse than the Kirin 960’s 50,000 score, and the Snapdragon 821’s 60,000 figure. It is, however,  better than the Snapdragon 630’s 20,000 score. Although it’s a bit underwhelming, it’s not much of a surprise considering the large gap in performance between Adreno GPUs and their Mali counterparts. 

2018 promises to be one of the best years in terms of smartphone performance, with cheap SoCs like the Exynos 7872, Surge S2, and now the Helio P70 all offering performance values that punch out of their weight classes. 

This listing isn’t to be taken as gospel, of course. The CPU score is unlikely but even at half of what is listed, it’s still a stupendous upgrade to last-years offerings within this price segment.