Snapdragon 680 vs Unisoc T618 vs Helio G88

Hello and welcome to another triple threat comparison. This one is between Snapdragon 680 vs Unisoc T618 vs Helio G88.

The Snapdragon 680 is a lower midrange SoC from chip giants, Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 680 (SD680) comes from a long line of illustrious SoCs like the SD625, SD636, SD660, SD662, SD665, SD675 and SD678. It is currently the darling of many smartphone makers and can be found on the Redmi Note 11, Samsung Galaxy A23 and several others.

The Unisoc T618 is Unisoc’s attempt to reach up into the lower midrange market. This SoC should chart the way for Unisoc to attempt to stake a claim for the midrange segment.

Then you have the Helio G88 from Taiwanese giants, MediaTek. With MediaTek having gained a lot of ground on Qualcomm in recent times, they seem to only pay lip service to the low end. As a result, the Helio G88 is only a rehash of the Helio G85 and G80.

Snapdragon 680 vs Unisoc T618 vs Helio G88

Performance

CPU

In terms of hardware, the T618 and G88 use superior ARM Cortex A75 CPU cores, but there’s only two of them. The SD680 on the other hand boasts of four ARM Cortex A73 CPU cores. These extra two big cores can help tackle heavier tasks better on the SD680 than on the T618 and the G88.

When it comes to performance, the SD680 should edge ahead of the other two.

GPU

The Mali G52 MP2/MC2 GPU used by both the T618 and G88 is slightly superior on paper, but is not very optimized for games. on the other hand, the Adreno 610 on the SD680 is more optimized for games and outperforms the Mali G52 in real life use.

Build process and architecture

The SD680 is built on a very efficient TSMC 6nm process whilst the other two are built on an older Samsung 12nm process. This means that the SD680 should heat less, maintain peak performance for longer and use less battery that the other two.

RAM

All three SoCs use LPDDR4x RAM but the SD680 RAM is much faster and should handle multitasking and app switching better.

Benchmarks

Geekbench

• Single core
• SD680 – 371
• T618 – 393
• G88 – 363

On Geekbench, the T618 wins because it uses better A75 CPU cores. The SD680 is beaten in single core performance because it uses ARM Cortex A73 CPU cores. Note that CortexA73 CPUs are not as good as the A75. The G88 is pretty slow and comes dead last.

• Multi core
• SD680 – 1545
• T618 – 1336
• G88 – 1261

When all the CPU cores are combined together, the SD680’s 4 A73 CPU cores perform better than the 2 A75 CPU cores that are found in the Unisoc T618 and the Helio G88.

AnTuTu

AnTuTu tests how the CPU cores, GPU, RAM and Storage all perform together.

• SD680 – 264,817
• T618 – 250,392
• G88 – 230,343

It is quite clear which SoC is the better performer.

Putting all of these together, the SD680 edges ahead of the other two in terms of performance.

Multimedia

ISP, Camera support and photography

Qualcomm takes photography and videography seriously and this shows, even down in the lower midrange segment. The SD680 comes with Qualcomm’s Spectra 346 ISP+ Hexagon 686 DSP. It also supports up to 64MP cameras. It is by far the best SoC for photography here.

The MediaTek Helio G88 comes second here while the Unisoc T618 comes third.

Videography

The SD680 can record and playback videos of up to 1080p@60fps. The T618 and Helio G88 can also do 1080p video but they are stuck on 30fps.

Storage

The SD680 supports UFS storage while the T618 and G88 only support eMMC 5.1. Clear win for SD680.

Connectivity

Phones first and foremost are communications devices and Qualcomm are well aware of that. This is why they equipped the SD680 with a Snapdragon X11 Modem that is LTE Cat. 13 capable. The T618 and the Helio G88 on the other hand use much slower LTE Cat. 7 modems.

The SD680 also uses a better Bluetooth 5.1 connection as opposed to the other two SoCs (T618 and G88) that use Bluetooth 5.0. All three SoCs on the other hand support Wi-Fi 5.

When it comes to connectivity, the SD680 is a lot better.

Summary

• Performance – SD680
• Multimedia – SD680
• Connectivity – SD680

Conclusion

It is quite clear that the Snapdragon 680 is currently the King of the lower midrange market and will continue to reign supreme until it is phased out by next year. The only downside to the SD680 is that it is rather pricey. The T618 and the G88 are much cheaper and this reflects in the prices of the phones that bear them.

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