Cortex-A12 ought to provide very good performance in a more budget-ish device, I'd have thought? It did seem a bit odd that a chip purportedly containing Cortex-A17 was announced pretty much as soon as ARM released any information about it.
On the other hand, I'm currently on a bit of downer about Mediatek after I discovered that they are refusing to release source code for their chips (though GPL'd) and are even requesting fees for access to the source! Not only that, but they aren't providing patches for security holes (or at least the many Chinese OEMs aren't) and with no source, there is no easy way fix them either. Not to mention the fact that they aren't taking support for any current chips past Android 4.2 at the moment. A real shitty way to run a business:
http://www.xda-developers.com/android/have-you-paid-your-linux-kernel-source-license-fee/
Wouldn't surprise me to see Android 4.3 or even 4.4 roms with the MT6595, but as things stand, you'd be daft to expect upgrades past there.
On the other hand, I'm currently on a bit of downer about Mediatek after I discovered that they are refusing to release source code for their chips (though GPL'd) and are even requesting fees for access to the source! Not only that, but they aren't providing patches for security holes (or at least the many Chinese OEMs aren't) and with no source, there is no easy way fix them either. Not to mention the fact that they aren't taking support for any current chips past Android 4.2 at the moment. A real shitty way to run a business:
http://www.xda-developers.com/android/have-you-paid-your-linux-kernel-source-license-fee/
Wouldn't surprise me to see Android 4.3 or even 4.4 roms with the MT6595, but as things stand, you'd be daft to expect upgrades past there.