MediaTek, that other company besides well-known brands such as Samsung, Intel and Qualcomm that manufactures budget smartphone processors, is having a bad start in February.
After just dealing with a software issue early this month about their chipsets that are making Android devices more susceptible to attack, the Taiwanese semiconductor company now has to deal with supposed heating problems in its top-of-the-line Helio X20 chip.
MediaTek's Helio X20 is said to be the world's first 10-core processor, but all that power could be coming at a cost. Announced back in May last year, the Helio X20 had seen some delays along the way.
First, there were problems with the Wi-Fi dropping at random times and now overheating issues have popped up. At this point, however, issues of the X20 overheating are based purely on rumors. MediaTek has yet to comment and the company's roadmap has the chipset's launch still scheduled by the end of March.
But rumors can go a long way. When Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 chipset was rumored to have overheating issues, Samsung backed off after testing it with its flagship Galaxy S6 last year. Similarly, LG also decided to skip the Snapdragon 810 in favor of the Snapdragon 808 instead.
Now MediaTek is facing the same predicament where three major manufacturers have supposedly backed off from supporting the Helio X20 in their devices. According to reports, Xiaomi, Lenovo and HTC are skipping out on the X20 with no plans to incorporate the chipset into their handsets for this year.
Between the three top-of-the-line chipsets expected this year — the Exynos 8890, Snapdragon 820 and Helio X20 — it's MediaTek's offering that's technically inferior but is also cheaper than the other two. If vendors do hold out on using the X20, it's not certain what other budget processors OEMs would use for their lower-tier handsets.
If the rumors are true and phone makers are backing out on the X20, this will put MediaTek in the same spot as Qualcomm last year. Fortunately for Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 810 still made it to some devices such as Google's flagship Nexus 6P. So far, that device hasn't had too many overheating issues as rumors earlier suggested.
