Qualcomm is used to being first across every line when it comes to new modem technologies, and there has certainly been a bright spotlight on its latest flagship, the Snapdragon 855. However, MediaTek, whose place in the smartphone market has weakened in the past couple of years, followed hard on its arch-rival’s heels, announcing its Helio P90 smartphone system-on-chip just a week after the 855 made its debut. Made in a 12nm node, the P90 runs on two ARM Cortex-75 cores running at up to 2.2 GHz and six A55 cores at 2 GHz. These specs are outshone by those of the 7nm Snapdragon 855, which uses four large cores, one running up to 2.84 GHz and three at 2.42…