Chip maker MediaTek is launching two new system-on-a-chip solutions aimed at mid-range devices. The MediaTek Helip P23 and P30 will be available in China in the third quarter of 2017 before possibly making their way into devices sold internationally.

Both are 2.3 GHz octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 processors with ARM Mali-G71 MP2 graphics and support for dual-cameras. But the P30 has faster graphics, higher-resolution cameras, and features a new vision processing unit with support for real-time bokeh affects, among other things.

Both chips also feature support 4G LTE dual-SIM phones with dual standby support.

Here’s an overview of the specs for each new chip:

MediaTek Helio P23

  • 8 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU CPU cores at up to 2.3 GHz
  • ARM Mali-G71 MP2 graphics at 770 MHz
  • Max display resolution: 2160 x 1080
  • Up to 13MP + 13MP dual cameras
  • Up to 4GB of 933 MHz LPDDR4x RAM or up to 6GB of 1600 MHz RAM
  • Video decoding: 1080p @ 30 fps (h.264 and HEVC)
  • Video encoding: 1080p @ 30 fps (h.264)
  • 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth, GLONASS, FM radio
  • 4G LTE Cat-7 DL / CAT-13 UL with VoLTE support

MediaTek Helio P30

  • 8 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU CPU cores at up to 2.3 GHz
  • ARM Mali-G71 MP2 graphics at 950 MHz
  • Max display resolution: 2160 x 1080
  • Up to 16MP + 16MP dual cameras
  • Up to 4GB of 933 MHz LPDDR4x RAM or up to 6GB of 1600 MHz RAM
  • Video decoding: 4K @ 30 fps (h.264 and HEVC)
  • Video encoding: 4K @ 30 fps (h.264)
  • 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth, GLONASS, FM radio
  • 4G LTE Cat-7 DL / CAT-13 UL with VoLTE support

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9 replies on “MediaTek launches Helip P23 and P30 chips for mid-range phones”

  1. Meh CPU, Nice GPU… until I read the “MP2” behind it. And lack of H.265 encoding.
    Well, guess that’s another bad GPU then.

    It would’ve made more sense if both chips had “MP8” GPU’s, and clocked one upto 500MHz and clocked the other upto 800MHz. And include 10-bit HEVC encoding/recording on both models.
    That way they would’ve been MODERN processors that simply lack cpu/processing power.
    Currently it seems too complex and cut-down, and no incentive to get over other competitors.

    Guess MediaTek loves stagnant tech releases, next to breaking International law with GPL practices…

      1. True.
        But who’s to say that AMLogic, Allwinner, and RockChip might not offer the same price for SoC’s that were more meaningfully designed.

        At the $100-$300 range, they could potentially offer a similar SoC but it might have a 16nm build, 2.5GHz Quadcore A53, and 700MHz G71-MP8.

        The only thing missing would be documentation and open-source drivers and support. Ship that into some choice devices and suddenly that chip becomes a commodity itself. Thats the best way to beat MediaTek.

        I mean people still remember the Allwinner A10, and the devices where it supported native Ubuntu.

        1. Well, you know what to look for if you want the sure things in life.
          And ‘more meaningfully designed’ is in the eye of the beholder relative to what the target is. The predecessor Helio P25 (16nm 2.6 GHz Quadcore A53) was released 6 months ago. Someone can always just turn up the CPU clock a bit and throw a more powerful GPU in their chip if that’s all they want with no care about power consumption/efficiency or anything else. Perhaps MT deliberately made trade-off decisions RE: CPU/GPU performance and power consumption/effiency along with other feature upgrades and constraints (e.g. cost/price for one)

          My understanding is MT incorporated significant upgrades of the video encode/decode blocks as well as full support for higher resolution dual cameras and enhanced video processing capabilities – plus improved modem performance/features including LTE support on both the primary and secondary SIMs when in Dual Sim, Dual Standby (DSDS) mode. You may not care about these things but perhaps customers and end-users MT talked with do – I doubt they designed these chips in a vacuum.

          Maybe in this case the whole is greater than the sum of the CPU/GPU?…

          1. No, you’ve got it all wrong.
            The features of the encoders, Dac’s and radio’s are features from the high-end that trickle down to the mid-range and low-end SoC’s. This is nothing special, as it naturally occurs with all the competitors.

            Besides you completely skipped over my point that this LACKS HEVC encoding, because the graphics units are too slow and cut-down ones.

            What I was saying is that there’s very little performance gain in Android when you go from Quadcore to Octocore with only the A53 cores. However, the power expenditure is still there so this really isn’t an efficient way to go.

            Sure, it looks better in marketing “NEW NEW NEW awesum super duper MediaTek processors with EIGHT cores and TEH best MALI gpu OUT THERE”.
            …but a “meaningfully designed” SoC for the low-end would be as I described, only four of the slow/little cores being able to clock high with a decent GPU would be better for everyday use. And even better would be Cortex A55’s. Not sure why Cortex A72’s are still thought of as high-end today, they’re definitely mid-range now on 16nm chips.

            Otherwise MediaTek should simply get rid of 4 of the A53’s, and sell this SoC for around $3 each the IoT and low-low end devices (<$100). As far as we can deduce, they'll be charging ~$9 each for P23, and ~$12 each for P30. Still far cheaper than Qualcomm's QSD 821 for ~$50 each, and the QSD 835 for ~$80. Doesn't seem like a big difference between $12 and $50… but in large volumes, economies of scale, this translates into huge sums.

          2. eh… no one said anything about the CPU being NEW NEW NEW because the P23/30 CPU configuration is just a refinement of the previously released P20/P25 devices – and sorry but the P30 CAN do HEVC encoding. I’m sure MT is fully aware of the Cortex A55 and likely has chip designs in process – but the A55 didn’t fit the timetable for these devices (as I suspect you know or at least should) 4G DSDS is NOT a ‘trickle-down’ feature – MT believes it important as dual SIMS are common in Asia where these chips are primarily targeted. Some of the other features are ‘trickle-down’ – some aren’t… For those that are ‘trickle-down’ from the Helio X30, then the incremental effort to incorporate them is minimal.

            Acknowledge your opinion but it’s just that, an opinion even as you obviously strongly believe it an informed one. I just doubt MT put their $ behind the design of these chips with zero customer input – it’s very likely the P30 is aimed at specific customers in China with the P23 looking like a slightly gimped version that fell out of the design effort. Will they be wildly successful? Hell, I don’t know – most any new product has risks to one degree or another… especially in a fast-moving competitive market like smartphone SoCs. How do you measure success? Maybe they primarily came out with the P30 to satisfy one or more of their big Chinese market customers and any other business they get is just gravy. We’ll likely never know how many P23/30 units were sold – either way this exchange will be long forgotten anyway.

          3. Did you read the specs above?
            There is no HEVC encoding on the P30. There is decoding, but that’s easier, and even then it isn’t the full spec… notice how it says upto 30fps.

            The P23 is even weaker graphic unit.

            These features matter. They matter to the end-user, and matter much more than just squeezing an extra 4-small cores in there.

            Like I said, this chip is a marketers dream, it has all the buzz, but none of the substance. Sure MediaTek could’ve done what I said and built a more sensible SoC, or even built a SoC using more modern features like Cortex A55. But that’s not what MTK is doing here and that’s not what they want to do… they want to bring out the improvements as gradual as possible to make as much money as possible and stay in the game for as long as possible. MediaTek has a track record of such direction, and that is my entire point, they are NOT innovators of the low-end/mid-range BUT they can be IF they wanted.

  2. As far as I can tell the P series does not have 10bit hevc. The X series definitely does. I would expect that 99% of phone users will be using streaming services, and this will not matter to them. I personally would not buy phones or tablets with these chipsets.

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