Why is MediaTek better than Snapdragon?
The competition and rivalry between MediaTek and Qualcomm is no secret. Both these brands are always pitted against each other. The common misconception is that Qualcomm is better than MediaTek. But I’m here to try and explain why I think it is otherwise.
The American corporation Qualcomm came into the market with its Snapdragon processors almost over a year before MediaTek and at that time there had been a complete monopoly of Qualcomm in the mid-range market. Before MediaTek, the budget segment was practically unheard of. In India, 10k is the upper limit of the budget segment and above that the mid-range segment begins. Mediatek began by dominating the budget segment and the company still powers most phones in that price segment. However, now mediatek has also gravitated towards higher-end smartphones and have been doing really well there too.
This preconceived notion that Mediatek is inferior to Qualcomm is mostly because the former is more affordable than the latter but that doesn’t mean it is a fair or even accurate conclusion. 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 chipsets. These include- OPPO, Realme, Vivo, LG and many others. The Helio series chipsets are chiefly used for 4G smartphones and the new Dimensity chipsets power the 5G smartphone. The Dimensity series is MediaTek’s most recent development in successfully bringing the 5G chips to the masses and coming a step closer in bridging the ever-expanding connectivity gap in the world.
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.
When comparing to Qualcomm, it should also be remembered that Mediatek processors are much more cost effective. The majority of the budget phones, if not all, are powered by MediaTek and for the price, they give a very good performance and money’s worth. MediaTek’s progress has been very swift in terms of growth, development and therefore its popularity increased. Before the launch of Dimensity processors from Mediatek, especially the 700 and 800 series, it was hard to imagine that a 5G enabled smartphone could be priced below 30k but it was made possible.
Yes, Mediatek powered smartphones are more affordable, but that is not at the cost of performance. 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. There were reports that said that MediaTek overtook Qualcomm in Q3 2020, to become the biggest chipset supplier for smartphones. Talking in regards to the current scenario, it is quite safe to say that the MediaTek processors are much better than the ones produced by Qualcomm and it is based on nothing but facts.
