Tuesday's news from Taiwan carried the announcement from MediaTek of its new MT6795 system on a chip. Expect MT6795 chip-powered devices to be available by the end of the year. MediaTek said the chip is to create opportunities for device makers "to gain first-mover advantage with top-of-the-line devices in the 64-bit Android device market. The company further noted its 2K on device display (2560x1600).

Don Clark in The Wall Street Journal described it as "a heavy-duty smartphone chip with eight processor cores." The chip could potentially boost the company's position regarding top of line devices using Google's Android operating system. The company called it a "flagship smartphone SoC" designed to empower "high-end device makers to leap into the Android 64-bit era." WSJ's Clark, assistant news editor, said, "The company, originally known for chips used in low-end phones for emerging countries, this week is providing more evidence of a strategy shift with a heavy-duty smartphone chip with eight processor cores."

In general, said CNET, "64-bit chips allow for faster apps that can handle a lot of data more efficiently than the 32-bit processors typical in smartphones and tablets today." The new chip, said MediaTek, has a clock speed of up to 2.2GHz. Its processor, said CNET, allows it to provide smoother use of graphics, games, and high-resolution, 2K video.

MediaTek, headquartered in Taiwan and with worldwide office, considers the MT6795, with its 4G LTE support, as especially appealing for power users. MediaTek said the SoC satisfies multimedia requirements of more demanding users, with "multimedia subsystems that support many technologies never before possible or seen in a smartphone, including support for 120Hz displays and the capability to create and playback 480 frames per second (fps) 1080p Full HD Super-Slow Motion videos." The launch of MT6795 could help accelerates the global transition to Long Term Evolution, or LTE, a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals As ExtremeTech describes LTE, it is "a very good, easily deployable network technology, offering high speeds and low latencies over long distances."

The MT6795 is "aimed at phones that will eventually retail at the $350 unlocked price point and higher," according to a report in Android Central.

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