As part of an effort to compete more effectively with Qualcomm in the premium and high value smartphone tiers, MediaTek today announced its first 5G chipset platform with millimeter wave capabilities.
MediaTek designed the Dimensity 1050 chipset to provide consumers with high speed 5G even in the most densely populated areas, advanced camera technology, superior gaming, and power efficiency for longer battery life between charges.
The Dimensity 1050 chipset includes:
- An eight-core baseband-applications processor fabricated in TSMC’s advanced N6 (6 nm) CMOS.The processor cores include two Arm Cortex-A78 CPUs with clock speeds up to 2.5 GHz.
- A mmWave antenna-in-package module with mmW RF transceiver fabricated using GlobalFoundries’ 22 nm fully depleted silicon on insulator process (22FDX).
Other features of the Dimensity 1050 include:
- An Arm Mali-G610 graphics engine with support for 144 Hz full HD+ displays and vibrant colors using MediaTek’s MiraVision 760.
- A dual HDR video capture engine that allows users to simultaneously stream with the front and rear cameras.
- AI-assisted photography with superb noise reduction for low-light photos.
- Wi-Fi 6E (using MediaTek’s separate Wi-Fi SoC with 2 x 2 MIMO) for tri-band connections in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz Wi-Fi bands.
- Support for 3CC carrier aggregation on sub-6 (FR1) spectrum and 4CC carrier aggregation on mmWave (FR2) spectrum.
- Dual 5G SIM capability (5G SA + 5G SA) and dual VoNR (voice over 5G).
The Dimensity 1050 will compete with Qualcomm’s 8-series and 7-series smartphone platforms and Samsung’s Exynos 5G, and should provide OEMs with more choices to help them differentiate their smartphones from the competition.
MediaTek’s decision to support 5G mmW can be taken as a vote of confidence in mmW technology and as a sign that the company plans to sell into more phones in the United States market, the largest market for 5G mmW smartphones so far. Up until now, Qualcomm has been the main supplier of mmW-capable 5G chipsets, with Samsung just recently entering the market.
Qualcomm has started to promote 5G-A (5G Advanced) to set the stage for its next chipsets and has also started to talk about 6G in earnest. Can MediaTek catch up to Qualcomm in terms of 5G chipset sales, or will Qualcomm continue to maintain a sales lead by pushing the leading edge of cellular technology?
For our on-going analysis of processors and chipsets in mobile phones, see our abstracts and blogs at the Strategy Analytics RF & Wireless Components service and the Handset Component Technologies service web pages.