Most of us here in the US probably haven’t heard of MediaTek. But they product cheap processors, which are actually pretty good. I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing a few devices from Lenovo, Acer and BLU that housed MediaTek processors, and they worked pretty well for me. Now they don’t out perform the Snapdragon 800 or 801, but they are pretty decent for what they are. They are typically used in low-end devices, in an attempt to keep the cost down. However, MediaTek is looking to expand and get in with the bigger names like Sony, for SoCs for their newer devices.
A new report this morning tells us that Sony is looking to use MediaTek chips in about 5 smartphones in 2015. Sony already has the MT6589 from MediaTek in the Xperia C, which is actually a pretty good processor. Although it is a Quad-core (1GHz) ARM Cortex-A7 processor, so don’t expect it to outperform Qualcomm’s latest stuff. Some of these devices from Sony that are going to be sporting MediaTek chips will offer 4G connectivity, which usually means that it will be mid-range or low-end devices. But it’s a few more phones that MediaTek is getting into, and Sony is definitely a more popular smartphone manufacturer than Vivo, BLU, Acer, and Lenovo. Although Lenovo has been using more Qualcomm chips lately.
We’re seeing more and more companies looking to cut down costs so they can sell their devices cheaper, we may see more and more companies heading to MediaTek for their processors. Which is great, because we need competition in the processor world as well. Currently, Qualcomm is really the only manufacturer out there for SoCs, as Samsung’s Exynos chips almost never have LTE embedded, and NVIDIA hasn’t had a Tegra chip in a popular device in quite some time. How many of you would buy a Sony device with a MediaTek processor inside?