MediaTek Helio G85: Everything you need to know about the new mid-range gaming chipset

(Image credit: Future)

Xiaomi announced Redmi Note 9 at the global launch recently along with Redmi Note 10 Lite. The vanilla Redmi Note 9 sported a new and unannounced chipset from MediaTek, the Helio G85. After a few days of the launch, MediaTek has finally announced the details of the chipset. 

The MediaTek Helio G85 is the company’s fifth mobile processor in the G-Series and is the enhanced version of already existing Helio G80 chipset. It is targeted at mid-range gaming smartphones. One of the key features of the new chipset is the higher clocked GPU.

The MediaTek Helio G85 is a 64-bit Octa-core chipset featuring two performance core ARM Cortex-A75 and six power-efficient core Cortex-A55 CPUs clocked at 2.0GHz and 1.8GHz respectively. Built on TSMC’s 12nm manufacturing process, the Helio G85 chipset is integrated with ARM Mali-G52 MC2 GPU which is clocked at 1GHz, making it one of the fastest GPU. It features an L3 cache that enhances the performance.

(Image credit: MediaTek)

The chipset supports up to 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and eMMC 5.1 storage type. On the display front, it supports up to Full HD+ with 2,520 x 1,080 resolution with a 21:9 tall aspect ratio. However, the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz here.  

The MediaTek Helio G85 is capable of handling multiple camera arrays with the likes of wide-angle, telephoto, macro lenses. It supports up to 16MP + 16MP or a single 48MP sensor. Other camera features include AI face unlock, smart photo album, EIS, and Multi-frame noise reduction. On the connectivity front, the device supports Dual SIM, 4G, VoLTE, ViLTE, WoWi-Fi, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, and Beidou/Galileo/Glonass/ GPS for navigation. 

Furthermore, the Helio G85, just like the other G series chipsets, is integrated with MediaTek HyperEngine technology that offers connectivity and resource management enhancements like predicting Wi-Fi & LTE concurrency triggers in just 13ms, faster response between smartphone and cell-tower, dynamic management of the CPU, GPU and memory.

At the Redmi Note 9 launch event, the company also mention the AnTuTu benchmark score of the chipset. The MediaTek Helio G85 powered Redmi Note 9 scored 2,05,946 on the synthetic benchmark which is 21% improvement in performance compared to the Redmi Note 8, powered by Snapdragon 665 chipset. 

We can expect more mid-range smartphones from other smartphones makers to feature MediaTek Helio G85 chipset in the coming months 

Srivatsa Ramesh

Srivatsa is a prolific writer who spearheads the core writing team on tech news, buying guides, reviews, and all gadget articles. He is passionate about technology.