Dunno why people are bashing Mediatek? Afterall, all they're doing is using ARM's core design? Bash the SoC, not the company!
Repeating some Captain Obvious stuff:
In the ARM SoC world, people license Intellectual Property (IP) from ARM. Sometimes people license the whole core design from ARM and then they put it in their SoC. That's what TI, Samsung and Mediatek do.
Cortex A7, A9 and A15 are ARM designed cores. They license it from ARM and then simply put it in their SoC. In the case of this SoC, Mediatek is licensing Cortex A7 (because it's cheaper) and this core is an ARM design. Not Mediatek's. Though it is even slower than Cortex A9.
Next - Qualcomm actually licenses a bigger thing. They have such a license that they can make their own core designs with the same instruction set. That's what Scorpion, Krait et cetera are.
Next - in the ARM SoC world, people are also licensing the GPU from the third party, example PowerVR series from Imagination Technologies. Mali series of GPUs is licensed by ARM. Samsung was using it for SGS2 and SGS3. Galaxy Nexus had a TI chipset which had PowerVR SGX540. Qualcomm makes their own GPU - Adreno. Adreno was made by AMD earlier (jumble and you'll get Radeon). They sold to Qualcomm (bad decision) and mobile market exploded.
So basically an SoC developer makes a dish by getting readymade ingredients from everywhere else.
Bashing Mediatek is okay - but bash for the right reason. They're choosing Cortex A7 for this octa-core SoC - which is slow but it is a core design by ARM.
aaaaaand they're perfectly capable of putting Cortex A15 in their new SoCs - all they'll have to do is just license it from ARM - then they'll be world class? That's how SoC world is.
Some day they might put the highest core design from ARM in their SoC - but for them it makes no sense because the big phone manufacturers won't use it. So their bread and butter is - putting their SoCs in desi/Chinese phones. Good strategy and it makes them easy money.
Look into the other factors as well - Cortex A15 license will cost a bomb. Mediatek can't afford. If they even get it, will they actually sell enough phones to recover the amount? They rely on low-end desi/Chinese. If they'll start putting A15 in those phones, their margins will be low and these phones don't sell a whole lot. They won't recover money.
tl;dr -
Bash the SoC. Not the company.
About battery draining issues even high end phones struggle to for a day with normal usage, a Quad core Mediatek can last even a day and half considering its price and performance.
yup.
Cortex A7 is power efficient.
I already mentioned this in one of my post and for sure MTK will never be at par with it's competitor.
They can easily get par. lol. Just license the damned A15. Eaaaaassssyyyyyyyyyyy.
And the very reason no company with good international standing uses MTK proccys is their poor build quality which would far outweigh that VFM factor.
Mediatek doesn't fabricate/manufacture their processors. TSMC does. Also, AMD and nVidia don't fabricate their GPUs as well. TSMC fabs them. Same company.
Even Qualcomm doesn't fab their SoCs. TSMC does.
Nothing is even wrong with the "build quality" of Mediatek SoCs. Afterall, there are very few fabrication companies and all are well specialised.
Build quality of the phones using Mediatek SoCs? Then you have a point.
