MediaTek introduces new smartphone chip system supporting biometric facial recognition

Feb 5, 2020 | Luana Pascu

MediaTek introduces new smartphone chip system supporting biometric facial recognition

MediaTek has developed a new chip called Helio G80, which is part of its mid-range System on Chip (SoC) product line and close in performance to the G70, with image processing capable of object recognition and facial biometrics, writes xda developers.

The G-series assures enhanced performance in mobile games, while keeping prices low for consumers. The first chip in the portfolio was the Helio G90/G90T, introduced in July 2019, and integrated with the Redmi Note 8 Pro. Just last month, the company released G70 for cheaper gaming devices which will be integrated with the Realme C3 smartphone.

According to xda developers, the G80 chip will be included in gaming smartphones planned for delivery in India and, performance-wise, is similar to the Snapdragon 710.

The Helio G80 has an octa-core CPU consisting of 2 ARM Cortex-A75 cores clocked at a maximum frequency of 2.0GHz paired with 6 ARM Cortex-A55 cores clocked at a maximum frequency of 1.8GHz. The GPU is ARM’s Mali-G52 clocked at 950MHz, a slight frequency increase compared to G70. The SoC supports up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM clocked at 1800MHz.

The SoC does not support UFS technology for storage chips. The G80’s ISP supports a single 25MP camera with ZSL and dual 16MP cameras with ZSL. It is similar to the G70 in terms of display, modem and connectivity features. Helio G80 is generally very similar to G70, except for a minor increase in the maximum CPU frequencies of the Cortex A55 cores and an increase in the maximum GPU frequency.

The Helio G80 does not incorporate dedicated AI accelerators, but the company claims the chip’s image signal processor (ISP) supports object recognition in Google Lens, Smart Photo Album, scene detection, scene segmentation with background removal, portrait-mode augmentations and facial recognition. The G80 is compatible with MediaTek’s HyperEngine Game Technology initially included in Helio G90, and also supports Voice on Wakeup (VoW) support, EIS, Rolling Shutter Compensation, and an inertial navigation engine.