Monday #9. MediaTek 9200+ seems to be the best chipset for an Android smartphone

Table of Contents

Oppo closes chipset production

In mid-December last year, Oppo held a presentation where, in addition to the Oppo Find N2 and Oppo Find N2 Flip foldable smartphones, they also talked about the custom MariSilicon Y chipset, which was supposed to take wireless sound to a new level. The chipset promised 6 times the bandwidth of the current Bluetooth standard.

And last week we discussed the prospects of the new RISC-V architecture. And, listing the potential drivers for the growth of the new architecture, they just said that Arm Holdings (the owner of the ARM architecture), in the process of litigation with Qualcomm, decided to take a different approach to licensing issues.

Among other things, Arm Holdings is considering banning smartphone manufacturers from inventing custom coprocessors on their own. These are modules such as NPU (neuroprocessor for artificial intelligence), GPU (graphics processing unit), IPS (processor for processing photographs). And it seems that Arm Holdings is serious, as there are no other reasons why Oppo closed its chipset division one day.

Until a couple of weeks ago, Zeku, as the chipset division is called, was actively posting a lot of vacancies looking for chip architecture engineers. Chinese newspaper South China Post interviewed Zeku workers, who were shocked by the division’s closure. Some complained that they did not even have time to pick up laptops, and now they are not allowed into the office either.

Oppo itself explained what is happening by saying that “due to the uncertainty in the global economy and the smartphone industry, OPPO has to make difficult adjustments for long-term development. Therefore, the company has decided to terminate ZEKU’s activities.”

The situation is extraordinary. The MariSilicon Y chipset was presented among the main innovations that will change the audio market, and after 5 months, when, in fact, the audio novelties should have started, the company closes the entire division.

And it’s not just about the audio chipset. For example, the MariSilicon X chipset in the company’s promotional materials was presented as one of the key advantages of some Oppo smartphones. This is a chipset that uses artificial intelligence to optimize photos.

However, whether Oppo closed its division due to Arm Holdings’ new licensing schemes will become clear later. After all, not only Oppo has custom chipsets. The Google chipset has tensor cores, Xiaomi has its own developments, TECNO has its own developments, yes, in general, each manufacturer has its own solutions, which are discussed at presentations for marketing purposes.

And if there are rumors that other manufacturers have also begun to wind down fishing rods, then the new licensing scheme is definitely to blame.

I find it hard to believe that Oppo closed the chipset design company for economic reasons. BBK Electronics, which owns the brands Oppo, Vivo, realme, is too powerful an office to close a strategically important asset due to a temporary drop in sales. Especially considering that from the second half of the year everyone is waiting for the start of an increase in consumer activity. Well, or we don’t know something and it will be scary further, so the locks are hastily batten down.

New MediaTek 9200+ chipset

Last week, MediaTek introduced the new MediaTek Dimensity 9200+. And, in my opinion, this is the most delicious bun on the chipset market.

So, MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ is 8 cores on a 4 nm process technology:

• Arm Cortex-X3 super core up to 3.35 GHz
• 3 performance Arm Cortex-A715 cores up to 3.0 GHz
• 4 power efficient Arm Cortex-A510 cores up to 2.0 GHz
• and Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU graphics

Like the Dimensity 9200, which we know well, one of the main features of the chipset is energy efficiency. So far, I have only tested Dimensity 9200 in smartphones from TECNO. And there the chipset impressed me by the fact that it practically does not waste energy in standby mode. That is, overnight, the smartphone will be discharged by a maximum of 1-2%, but rather will not lose a single percent of the charge at all. In the new chipset, MediaTek promises improved energy efficiency, and the numbers are serious:

• 35% less energy is spent when working with instant messengers.
• 36% in Wi-Fi hotspots – I don’t quite understand what you mean. Apparently, when working on a Wi-Fi network. Although I would like this item to include the operation of a smartphone as an access point.
• 10-21% more economical in games.
• Uses 10% less battery power when the display is on with EnergySmart Screen 2.0

In addition, when working with certain photomodules, the chipset promises 34% better energy efficiency when shooting photos / videos. By the way, the maximum theoretical camera resolution supported by the chipset is 320 MP. I hope that we will never see such cameras.

Well, the first performance tests have already begun to emerge on the Chinese Internet. So, in the 3DMark Wild Life test, the chipset from MediaTek showed a phenomenal result for Android chipsets at the level of A16 Bionic from Apple. 3DMark Wild Life is primarily a test that evaluates the gaming capabilities of a smartphone.

In AntuTu 9, the new chipset also did not disappoint, giving out 1,312,873 points. For comparison, in the official ranking, ASUS ROG 7 Ultimate on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is in first place with a score of 1,330,011 points. It should be borne in mind here that ROG 7 is a specialized overclocked gaming smartphone, and this result was obtained in X Mode + mode with an external cooler connected. In normal mode, ASUS scores 1,218,533 points. This I mean that in this way, most likely, the Dimensity 9200+ can be overclocked to better results. And from a layman’s point of view, MediaTek showed the most powerful chipset on the market, not inferior even to Apple chipsets.

The only sad news is the lack of announcements of interesting smartphones. There are only rumors about iQOO Neo 8 Pro and Redmi K60 Ultra. Both smartphones are conditional second-tier flagships, in which they buy performance at the expense of other characteristics.

Probably the first real flagship with Dimensity 9200+ on the Russian market will be TECNO Phantom X3 Pro, which should be shown at the end of the year. I would like to hope that TECNO will not save money and will supply UFS 4.0 memory and everything else that is suitable for the case.

Finally, I recommend viewing, if you missed it, a note on the state of affairs. While MediaTek has focused on performance and power efficiency, Qualcomm is passionate about ray tracing and supersampling technology in mobile games (similar to Nvidia’s DLSS).

Sony Xperia IV flagship

The world is cruel. Many companies are leaving the smartphone market. HTC left, followed by LG, against their will, but Huawei disappeared. And only Sony continues to release smartphones in spite of everyone. To paraphrase Romain Gary, frankly, I find it shocking and even indecent tenacity with which Sony Mobile clings to life. In my opinion, the company is overdoing it.

Specifications:

• Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• Screen: 6.5 inches, OLED, 3840 by 1644 dots, 120 Hz, brightness, 940 nits, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2
• Memory: 12 GB / 512 GB UFS 4.0
• Battery: Li-Po 5000 mAh, wired charging 30 W, wireless charging, reverse wireless charging
• Camera:
  • 52 MP, f/1.9, 24mm (wide), 1/1.35″, 1.12µm, Dual Pixel PDAF, OIS
  • 12 МП, f/2.3, 85mm (теле), f/2.8, 125mm (telephoto), 1/3.5″, Dual Pixel PDAF, 3.5x-5.2x continuous optical zoom, OIS
  • 12 MP, f/2.2, 16mm (ultra wide), 1/2.5″, Dual Pixel PDAF
  • Video recording [email protected]/25/30/60/120fps, optical stabilization
• Front-camera: 12 MP, f/2.0, 24mm (wide-angle), 1/2.9″, 1.25µm
• Connection: 5G, Wi-Fi 6e, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, USB Type-C 3.2
• Sensors: fingerprint scanner (side), accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity, lighting
• Other: there is a 3.5 mm jack, IP68, native support for Sony Alpha cameras
• Dimensions: 165 x 71 x 8.3mm, weight 187g
• Price: $1400

I finally figured out who the target audience of a smartphone is! Sony expects vloggers to buy the Xperia IV!

This is how the company sees the use of a smartphone. For example, you can easily organize shooting videos for adults. On the example, we are shown that the actor is in shorts in the frame. For the sake of the frame, the smartphone is turned the wrong way. But you get the idea.

An equally impressive option is to purchase a miniature external monitor for your smartphone. Such a screen costs nothing – 15 thousand rubles.

The smartphone also has a function to stream and simultaneously adjust the picture and see comments.

By the way, do not confuse bloggers with vloggers. The first ones are filmed on GoPro and similar cameras, then they are edited and uploaded to the Internet. In turn, vloggers are those who broadcast, as it were, online. Or he shoots on a smartphone, edits it there and uploads it to the network.

On the one hand, it’s cool that Sony is looking for positioning. On the other hand, it is still not clear who it is designed for, given that an external monitor can also be attached to the iPhone. Now, if Sony, at least in the kit for a smartphone, put such a thing together with a suspension and a microphone …