MediaTek Announces Octa-Core Dimensity 820 5G Chipset Optimised for Premium User Experiences

MediaTek has announced a new Dimensity chipset for smartphones, the Dimensity 820 with 5G support and the company's “latest multimedia, AI, and imaging innovations.” It is an octa-core processor with an integrated ARM Mali G57 GPU for handling graphics. The company says it has been designed for global sub-6GHz 5G networks in North America, Asia and Europe. The Dimensity 820 SoC support two 5G SIMs with its Voice over New Radio (VoNR) services.

As per the MediaTek website, the MediaTek Dimensity 820 SoC features four Cortex-A76 cores clocked at up to 2.6GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at up to 2GHz. The GPU is the Mali-G57 MC5 with a maximum display resolution of 2,520x1,080 pixels and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. Notably, the Dimensity 800 SoC by MediaTek has slightly slower CPU clock speeds at 2GHz and the features the Mali-G57 MC4 GPU. The newer Dimensity 820 SoC provides several improvements over the Dimensity 800 SoC.

The Dimensity 820 SoC comes with MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 that gives the chipset “best-in-class gaming experiences, with up to 33 percent more gaming performance than direct alternatives.” The engine also brings networking optimisations, rapid responsiveness, and picture quality enhancements.

The company also states that the MediaTek APU 3.0, which is the AI Processing Unit, present in the Dimensity 820 SoC provides better benchmark performance, precise AI-camera actions, and improves power efficiency. MediaTek's Imagiq 5.0 technology allows for up to four concurrent cameras and up to 80-megapixel sensors. The chip is capable of automatically capturing frames at different exposures and fusing them into a single video stream for enhanced video output.

It also supports up to 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM and H.264, H.265/HEVC video encoding. With the company's MiraVision Video technology, the Dimensity 820 SoC gets AI-PQ, HDR Composer (SDR to HDR), and enhanced HDR10+ video playback.

It comes with 5G support and 2CC Carrier Aggregation, which allows for seamless handover between two 5G connection areas. The Dimensity 820 SoC also has support for Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth v5.1, FM radio, UFS storage, and 4K (3,840x2,160 pixels) video recording.

The MediaTek Dimensity 820 SoC shares a lot of features with the recently unveiled 5G-Integrated Dimensity 1000+ SoC, except for a few additional features like support for up to 144Hz refresh rate panels. The Dimensity 1000+ SoC will be first seen in the upcoming iQoo Z1 5G set to launch tomorrow, May 19.

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