MediaTek Helio G96 and Helio G88 launched: specs and features

MediaTek Helio G96 and Helio G88
(Image credit: MediaTek)

MediaTek Helio G96 and Helio G88 mobile chipsets (SoCs) have been announced. The newly launched smartphone chipsets are made for budget and mid-range smartphones with a mission to provide better display and photography capabilities to everyone. Interestingly, the Helio G96 also supports NavIC 一 Indian navigation system. 

As you can guess by the name, the Helio G96 is the successor to the Helio G95 and the Helio G88 will succeed the Helio G85 SoC. Both are 4G power chipsets and the Helio G96 supports up to 120Hz display, up to 108MP main camera, and MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 Lite gaming suite. On the other hand, the Helio G88 supports up to 64MP main camera, 90Hz screen refresh rate display, and also supports MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 lite suite for gaming. Let’s take a closer look at the new budget chipsets from MediaTek. 

MediaTek Helio G96 features

(Image credit: MediaTek)

The Helio G96 is an octa-core processor(64-bit) with two Arm Cortex-A76 cores clocked up to 2.05GHz and six Arm Cortex-A55 cores for efficiency. This is paired with 2133MHz LPDDR4X memory and eMMC 5.1/UFS 2.2 storage. As for the gaming capabilities, the Arm Mali-G57 MC2 will handle things on the inside along with an intelligent resource management engine and networking engine 一 both of which are part of MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 Lite gaming. 

In terms of visuals, the chipset is said to have no limitation in DDIC supply, C-phy or D-phy interface and supports both LCD and AMOLED display with up to Full HD+ resolution and 120Hz screen refresh rate. In terms of optics, you get support for up to 108MP on the back and 32MP for selfie shooters. The SoC supports Cat-13 4G LTE WorldMode modem integration and brings support for dual 4G SIM VoLTE and ViLTE services.  

Other notable features include 4K at 30fps, FHD at 120fps, HD at 240fps video recording, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS / QZSS L1+ L5 / Galileo E1 + E5a / BeiDou B1C + B2a / NAVIC, 4X4 MIMO, and 4G Carrier Aggregation. 

(Image credit: Srivatsa Ramesh)

MediaTek Helio G88 features

The MediaTek Helio G88 is a slightly less powered SoC compared to the Helio G96. It is an eight-core mobile processor with two Arm Cortex-A75 CPUs operating up to 2GHz and six Arm Cortex-A55 CPUs. For gaming, the chipset comes with Arm Mali-G52 MC2 clocked at 1GHz. On the memory front, the Helio G88 can handle up to 1800MHz 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and eMMC 5.1. 

Further, the MediaTek Helio G88 supports up to 90Hz screen,  64MP main cameras and the company says this can be used for any combination of wide-angle, telescopic, macro cameras. It also includes Camera Control Unit (CCU), Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) and Rolling Shutter Compensation (RSC) technologies. 

Other features include Beidou, Galileo, Glonass, GPS, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5, up to 2k 30fps video recording, and MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 lite gaming suite. 

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.