Helio G96 chipset unveiled with 108MP camera and 120 Hz display support, G88 follows

Peter, 15 July 2021

While the future is 5G, the sun has not yet set on the Helio line of chipsets – in fact, MediaTek just refreshed the upper echelons with the reveal of the Helio G96 and Helio G88. Note that, despite their names, these are not strict upgrades over the G95 and G85.

The Helio G96 features are pair of Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 2.05 GHz and six A55 cores, same as the G95. However, its GPU is only a Mali-G57 MC2, a clear downgrade from the G76 MC4 that came before.

MediaTek unveils the Helio G95 and G88 chipsets

The chip is not without upgrades, however. For one, it supports 120 Hz displays (LCD and OLED alike) at up to 1080p+ resolution, up from 90 Hz. Also, the max camera resolution has been increased to support the 108 MP sensors that are available on the market, though video capture is still capped at 4K @ 30 fps.

Further upgrades include support for faster LTE (Cat 13 downlink), faster storage (UFS 2.2) and a newer Bluetooth version (5.2).

The Helio G88 is much more similar to its predecessor. It has the same pair of Cortex-A75 cores running at 2.0 GHz joined by six A55 cores. The Mali-G52 MC2 GPU runs at the same 1 GHz frequency. Even RAM and storage support are the same, the LTE modem is the same as well.

What has changed is that the G88 supports 90 Hz displays at up to 1080p+ resolution (the G85 seems to be capped at 90 Hz @ 720p+). Also, the main camera can have a 64 MP sensor, up from 48 MP.

	Helio G96	Helio G95	Helio G88	Helio G85
Big cores	2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.05 GHz	2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.05 GHz	2x Cortex-A75 @ 2.0 GHz	2x Cortex-A75 @ 2.0 GHz
Small cores	6x Cortex-A55	6x Cortex-A55	6x Cortex-A55	6x Cortex-A55
GPU	Mali G57 MC2	Mali-G76 MC4	Mali-G52 MC2 @ 1.0 GHz	Mali-G52 MC2 @ 1.0 GHz
Display	120 Hz @ 1080p+	90 Hz @ 1080p+	90 Hz @ 1080p+	90 Hz @ 720p+, 60 Hz @ 1080p+
RAM	LPDDR4X @ 2133 MHz	LPDDR4X @ 2133 MHz	LPDDR4x @ 1800 MHz	LPDDR4x @ 1800 MHz
Storage	UFS 2.2	UFS 2.1	eMMC 5.1	eMMC 5.1
Max cam resolution	108 MP	64 MP	64 MP	48 MP
Video capture	4K @ 30 fps	4K @ 30 fps	1080p @ 60 fps	1080 @ 60 fps
LTE modem (downlink)	Cat 13	Cat 12	Cat 7	Cat 7
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 5 (a/b/g/n/ac)	Wi-Fi 5 (a/b/g/n/ac)	Wi-Fi 5 (a/b/g/n/ac)	Wi-Fi 5 (a/b/g/n/ac)
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 5.2	Bluetooth 5.0	Bluetooth 5.0	Bluetooth 5.0

Both the Helio-G96 and G88 were upgraded to HyperEngine 2.0 Lite and support dual-SIM operation with VoLTE. They also feature new camera processing tricks, e.g. 3DNR and MFNR noise reduction in hardware for the G96.

Source

Reader comments

Wews
23 Aug 2021
t7N

helio g96 is more efficient than helio g90t and g95 because it has weaker gpu. But not as efficient as snapdragon

Mampara
15 Aug 2021
fjU

All the Helio lineup should have supported UFS 2.2 also. Dimensity should be WiFi 6 and UFS 3.1. The Helio G96 should have had 3 or 4 G57 cores and G88 2 G57 cores.