Is MediaTek processor good for long term?

Ishaan Bakshi
4 min readNov 2, 2021

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All smartphone processors have an expiration date so I don’t exactly know how to measure ‘long term’ to be honest. But I know for a fact, having used plenty of smartphones powered by Mediatek whether it is priced in budget range or mid-range and usually having had no issues at all, that Mediatek processors are in fact good for long term usage. Since I have only ever used smartphones powered by Snapdragon chipsets and Mediatek chipsets, I can only talk about the longevity of these two. And Mediatek processors more specifically, offer a lot of value for money as I have noticed in my experience. Even friends and family I know have used phones with mediatek processors in them and most of them didn’t even know about it. This is going to be my opinion of course so you can disagree if it doesn’t align with your experiences but the general misconception needs to be cleared.

Since Mediatek powered smartphones are relatively more affordable, people tend to confuse affordability with bad quality. I’m here to tell you that that’s absolutely not the case, at least not with Mediatek. It’s a well established fact that before buying phones, customers would look into the hardware and the processor powering the smartphone. In so many cases, at similar price points, Mediatek processors have outperformed rival chipsets. So many amazing smartphones have launched recently that are powered by Mediatek like Redmi 10 Prime, Vivo X70 Pro, Samsung Galaxy F42 5G and these are only in the 5G segment. Well-known brands like Xiaomi, Realme, Vivo etc trust mediatek to power their devices so I think it is safe to say that the chipset is worth it and delivers. Also, one major issue why some people doubt about the credibility and efficiency of mediatek processors is because, like I mentioned, they are more affordable.

Mediatek is one of the fastest growing organisations in the world, with its chipsets powering over 1.5 billion devices throughout a year. Various smartphones belonging to well-known brands are powered by MediaTek chips. These include- OPPO, Realme, Vivo, LG and many others. Now these are reputed and well established brands that are willingly using mediatek as their choice of processor to power devices they are manufacturing. Mediatek’s vast technological advancements has made it one of the biggest manufacturers of fabless chipsets in the industry. But it’s important to remember that nothing is all good or bad so we should trust figures before passing judgement. With so many new chipsets from Mediatek, especially the very recent 6-nm Dimensity 810 SoC for mid-range phones, the game has changed.

So, people who only decide to buy or not buy a smartphone by fixating on the name of the integrated processor, should make sure they look up scores, benchmarks and other stats for making an informed choice and not just because they are biased. Many people call out Mediatek as having heating issues and battery issues when compared to Qualcomm. While I agree that Initially, the MediaTek chipsets used to hugely consume battery and in turn, had heating issues. But now this has been rectified to a large extent and those issues have lessened considerably. With most smartphones packed with massive batteries, the MediaTek chipsets have definitely become a lot better in saving their power. The Qualcomm Snapdragon processors are notorious for their heating issues, which in turns drains the device battery much faster.

For long term usage, if you use your smartphone with care, not over charge it, or keep it full of unnecessary data that eats up your RAM and in turn slows down performance overall, you shouldn’t be facing any major issues whatsoever. I have been using a phone powered by mediatek and this is the fifth year and it’s still working fine wit no lagging and no heating. Therefore, to summarise the answer to this question of whether or not Mediatek processors are good for long term use- it actually depends on how you use it. If your smartphone is slowing down overtime that is only natural and the processor is not the only reason for it. So use your smartphones with care first of all and then see for yourself.

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Ishaan Bakshi
Ishaan Bakshi

Written by Ishaan Bakshi

“I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot” — JD Salinger