Mediatek’s first “true octa-core” caused quite a stir a couple of months ago. The tiny Cortex A7 chip is small, efficient and cheap, yet it is a decent mid-end offering and it appears to be very cheap.

As a result in already scored quite a few design wins and the first devices are already showing up, although general availability is expected in January. The allure of marketing cheap phones with an octa-core sticker probably had something to do with its success.

Now it is appears that a new LTE-enabled variant is on the way, too. The MT6595 is said to feature integrated LTE, so it should be Mediatek’s first SoC with integrated LTE.

According to Notebook Italia, the new chip will support 4G LTE, FDD and TDD, making it compatible with most 4G networks on the market. It should be clocked between 1.7GHz and 2.2GHz, so the top end part should be somewhat faster than the plain MT9592 sans LTE.

This might make the weird octa-core a bit more interesting in western markets.