MediaTek Dual-SIM Phone
Every U.S. carrier wants a sub-$200, high-quality smartphone, and you should, too. With Americans programmed to think that smartphones cost $199 (although they don't), the only way we're going to move away from subsidies and two-year contracts is if a decent smartphone actually does cost $199.
The closest we've seen so far is the Nokia Lumia 520 $59.99 at Amazon, which explains its solid position as the world's No. 1 Windows Phone. It looks like 2014 will be a turning point for the true $200 smartphone,
though: Intel, Nvidia, and now MediaTek have promised that quality phones are coming for that price.
Known for building cheap Chinese phones out of cheap Chinese chips, MediaTek is trying to vault across the Pacific in 2014, flying on its just-announced MT6595 chipset. The MT6595 is the first Mediatek chipset to deliver the things U.S. carriers are looking for: quad-core ARM Cortex-A17 CPUs buttressed by four smaller, lower-power A7 processors and an integrated modem with Category 4 LTE falling back to HSPA+ 42.
In plain English, that's a chipset that would fall very easily into AT&T or T-Mobile's lineups. (Sprint and Verizon would require a CDMA modem, which won't arrive until the next generation of this chipset.) So MediaTek has gone into the carrier labs to get the chip cleared, a process which will take several more months, said Mohit Bhushan, MediaTek's marketing vice president.
"There is really no good reason why phones with good displays should cost $700-800," Bhushan said. "For $100-200, we can provide phones based on platforms like this one."
The MT6595 is going to be pitched as less expensive than alternatives from Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Intel, but it isn't just cheap. It supports 2,560-by-1,600 displays, 20-megapixel cameras, and H.265, 4K video recording and playback. The chip offers similar speeds to the Cortex-A15s in current chipsets like the Nvidia Tegra 4, but uses 30 percent less power, Bhushan said.
Chipsets are pretty far up the design chain from having an actual retail phone, but Bhushan said Mediatek has an answer to that problem, too: a complete reference design that manufacturers just need to slap their names on and go with. That'll help the MT6595 power retail phones in the U.S. by the end of the year, he said.