Qualcomm is undeniably the darling of Android OEMs, with their chips being the only viable option for flagship smartphones and tablets. That's something MediaTek would obviously like to change with its latest premium SoC, the Helio P90.

Built using the 12-nanometer process, the P90 uses the company's APU 2.0 AI architecture, promising "a new level of AI experiences that are 4X more powerful" than anything it's made before. As well as being useful for AI purposes such as photography, it's also said to greatly improve battery life.

As for the tech specs, it's an octa-core chip with two Arm A75s running at up to 2.2GHz and six A55s at 2.0GHz. The GPU is an Imagination Technologies PowerVR GM 9446, and the SoC utilizes MediaTek's CorePilot tech for efficient multi-core processing.

Support for ARCore is usually based on each device individually, but the Helio P90 platform gets the seal of approval itself, allowing for interesting AR applications to run on phones using the chip. MediaTek's collaboration with Google also extends to its image recognition software Lens, which is also confirmed for the P90 chip.

A new ISP AI engine will be used for better photo-taking, and explicitly supports the new 48-megapixl camera sensors from Samsung and Sony. All the usual connectivity is also on board, such as dual SIM dual VoLTE 4G LTE and Bluetooth 5.0. The first devices with the Helio P90 will ship at some point in the first quarter of 2019.

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