MediaTek unveils Dimensity 9500 ahead of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

MediaTek has announced the Dimensity 9500, its next high-end smartphone chip, just days before Qualcomm is expected to unveil the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. 

Vivo and Oppo will launch the first phones with MediaTek’s new chip in October in Europe, South America, and Asia. However, no release date for the US has been given yet.

The new Dimensity 9500 is a big step up from last year’s Dimensity 9400. MediaTek says the new CPU delivers 29% higher single-core and 16% higher multi-core scores while using 37% less power.

Transition to Universal Flash Storage 4.1 from UFS 4.0 results in 2x read and write speeds. According to the company, this cuts large AI model loading times by 40%.

The chip keeps a familiar layout, but updates the cores to Arm’s renamed C1 series. The CPU cluster pairs one Arm C1-Ultra clocked at 4.21 GHz with three Arm C1-Premium cores at 3.5 GHz and four Arm C1-Pro cores at 2.7 GHz.

The graphics capabilities have also increased significantly. MediaTek reports a 33% bump in GPU performance and a 42% gain in energy efficiency. The company says that this should help phones last longer during gaming sessions. MediaTek added that ray tracing performance has doubled, enabling more realistic reflections and shadows. With ray tracing on, the chip can render up to 120 frames per second. It supports modern game technologies, including Vulkan 1.4 and Unreal Engine 5.6.

MediaTek’s new chip is highly focused on AI

The Dimensity 9500’s NPU 990 is billed as 100% faster on the smaller, 3-billion-parameter models often used on phones, which typically top out around 7 billion parameters. MediaTek also claims a 42% power-efficiency improvement when running these small AI models. The chip is described as the first in the industry to generate 4K images using AI.

For large language models, MediaTek says the Dimensity 9500 is the first mobile platform to support BitNet 1-bit, a technique the company links to 50% lower power use when running LLMs. Together, these steps are aimed at making more AI features practical to run on the device rather than the cloud.

Camera features see upgrades, too. The image pipeline adds support for 4K portrait video at 60 frames per second. For slow motion, the chip can handle 4K at 120 FPS, with Dolby Vision video and optical stabilization. As with its predecessor, the platform supports camera sensors up to 200 megapixels, keeping headroom for high-resolution photography.

Connectivity improvements include 5CC carrier aggregation, which MediaTek says increases bandwidth by 15% compared with the prior generation. That, combined with the efficiency gains in CPU and GPU subsystems, is meant to help phones sustain high data rates and performance without quick battery drain.

TSMC to raise prices for 3nm Chips, affecting MediaTek and Qualcomm

Another storyline could shape how these chips reach the market. All next-generation premium phone processors–including Apple’s A19 series, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500–are expected to use TSMC’s advanced N3P 3nm process. A report from China says TSMC has raised prices for this technology, which could put extra pressure on Android chipmakers’ costs.

According to a report by the China Times, TSMC increases N3P pricing by about 20% compared with the previous generation. This cycle, MediaTek would face 24% extra costs for the Dimensity 9500. On the other hand, Qualcomm will face an increase of 16 percent for its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

The impact on Apple, however, has not yet been cited. As TSMC’s largest customer, projected to account for 22% to 25% of the foundry’s total revenue by 2026, Apple may have secured more favorable terms, which would give it a cost advantage over rivals using the same node.

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