MediaTek launches Dimensity 9500, to take on Qualcomm's upcoming flagship
What's the story
MediaTek has unveiled its latest flagship processor, the Dimensity 9500. The new chip promises better performance and efficiency over its predecessor, the Dimensity 9400. It also emphasizes improved on-board artificial intelligence (AI) processing capabilities. The Dimensity 9500 sticks to MediaTek's "all big-core" design, which means it only has high-performance cores without dedicated small efficiency cores.
Chip design
Significant boost in performance
The Dimensity 9500 is built on a 3nm process and features one Arm's C1-Ultra, three C1-Premium, and four C1-Pro processors. MediaTek claims this new chip is 55% more efficient at peak performance than its predecessor. It also promises up to 32% better single-core performance and a 17% boost in multi-core performance. The chip supports LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage, the current standard for modern flagship smartphones.
Advanced features
4K image generation on-device
The Dimensity 9500 comes with the NPU 990, which MediaTek claims is the most powerful AI computing on a smartphone. It can even allow Android devices to generate 4K images using on-board processing. The chip also supports a maximum camera sensor of up to 320MP with 8K recording at 60fps. It can handle screen refresh rates of up to 180Hz and even supports tri-fold displays.
Gaming prowess
Improved gaming performance
The Dimensity 9500 features an Arm Mali-G1 Ultra MC12 GPU, which improves performance by 33%. MediaTek claims it's the first chipset to support 120fps gaming with ray tracing and can even upgrade 60fps titles to 120fps. The company also says that the chip is 30% more efficient when multitasking in games and social audio call apps.
Launch timeline
First devices will arrive in late Q4
MediaTek has announced that the first flagship devices powered by the Dimensity 9500 will launch in Q4 2025. OPPO and Vivo are likely to be the first companies to use this SoC in their devices. The announcement comes just a day ahead of Qualcomm's unveiling of its own flagship processor, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.