CES 2020 | MediaTek debuts the Dimensity 800 line SoCs for premium mid-range 5G phones

MediaTek has already announced its Dimensity 1000 SoC for flagship smartphones. Now, the Taiwanese OEM seeks to cover the premium mid-range sector of the same market with the new 800 series. These chipsets have 4 "big" Cortex-A76 ARM cores matched with 4 additional A55 cores that conserve power. Both clusters are clocked at 2.0GHz at most.

The Dimensity 800s have a GPU made of 4 of the same cores found in its series' flagship. Its MediaTek APU 3.0 is also quad-core, 3 of which have their own discrete architecture; this is unusual among AI processors. It is rated for as much as 2.4 TOPs in terms of performance.

This AI is used for tasks such as camera-enhancement. Again, MediaTek asserts that this software wil be the same as that associated with the Dimensity 1000s. It automatically informs aspects of photography such as autofocus, auto-exposure, white balance, noise reduction, dynamic range and facial detection.

The Dimensity 800 can drive FHD+ displays with a refresh rate of up to 90Hz. Its image signal processor can handle up to 4 cameras, 1 of which can be 64MP. Finally, this chipset is finished off with an integrated MediaTek modem compatible with the increasingly widespread sub-6GHz 5G standard. The chipset works in both standalone and non-standalone mode

The 800 processors' modem also features 2-carrier aggregation (2CC CA). This, as MediaTek claims, confers up to 30% broader high-speed layer coverage, as well as smoother band-to-band handover and improved average throughput compared to competitors with no aggregation.