This is why MediaTek needed to release a fourth G99

MediaTek has listed a "new" Helio G99+ on its website, and the only meaningful change from the original Helio G99 is memory support. Both chips share the same TSMC N6 (6 nm) process, the same 2x Arm Cortex-A76 (2.2 GHz) plus 6x Cortex-A55 (2.0 GHz) CPU cluster, and the same Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. The G99+ adds LPDDR5X support at up to 5,500 MT/s in place of the G99's LPDDR4X, while UFS 2.2 storage, 108 MP main camera support, and the Cat-13 4G modem with dual VoLTE all carry over unchanged.

So, why bother making a new SKU for such a small change? As it turns out, DRAM vendors are sunsetting the production of older LPDDR4X memory, with Samsung already confirming in April 2026 that it had stopped taking new orders for LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X. Its remaining commitments were set to run through the rest of 2026 before manufacturing lines converted to newer nodes in early 2027, but reports in May indicated that Samsung had completed the phase-out ahead of schedule. With LPDDR4X supply drying up industry-wide, a memory controller swap to LPDDR5X is less an upgrade than a requirement for keeping the G99 platform alive.

This is the fourth SoC MediaTek has built on the same base chip since the original G99 launched in May 2022. The Helio G100, announced in August 2024, kept the identical CPU and GPU configuration and added support for a 200 MP main camera sensor, along with an upgrade to Bluetooth 5.4. The Helio G200 followed in May 2025 with the same CPU cluster and a modest GPU clock increase to 1.1 GHz. Neither changed the process node, CPU core count, or CPU architecture from the original G99.

MediaTek has now shipped four distinct product pages for essentially one chip design: G99 (2022), G100 (2024, camera upgrade), G200 (2025, GPU clock and camera/connectivity features), and G99+ (2026, memory controller upgrade forced by the LPDDR4X sunset). Brand-new mask production and validation for TSMC's N6 process cost tens of millions of dollars, and reusing the same core IP across four SKUs is a straightforward way to reduce that bill as only the new PHY and memory controller need to be validated. At this rate, a G100+ and G200+ carrying the same memory upgrade would not be a surprise.