The chipset is arguably crucial a part of any telephone. It’s basic for the efficiency of the gadget, but additionally more and more relied on for AI capabilities.
In the event you’re selecting a flagship Android telephone or pill in 2026, you’ll have two most important choices. Qualcomm’s rebranded Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 could be the plain one, however ignore MediaTek at your peril.
The latter’s new Dimensity 9500 is a really sturdy alternative on paper, delivering a number of key upgrades which may even give it the higher hand this time round. Listed here are the important thing particulars that that you must know.
An enormous efficiency increase
The Dimensity 9500 is sticking with TSMC’s 3nm course of – the identical as Google’s new Tensor G5 within the Pixel 10 telephones – whereas shifting to a 3rd technology of its ‘All Huge Core’ CPU design.
It consists of an extremely core that may hit clock speeds of as much as 4.21GHz, plus three premium cores and 4 efficiency cores.
MediaTek claims this can yield as much as 32% extra single-core and 17 % higher multi-core efficiency than final yr’s Dimensity 9400.
It’s not clear which situations offers you the largest increase, although MediaTek says that the Dimensity 9500 permits “console-class gaming”.
Martyn Casserly
The chip options an Arm G1-Extremely GPU, plus assist for ray tracing at 120fps and real-time rendering and “immersive lighting results” through the Unreal Engine.
Crucially, energy effectivity hasn’t been forgotten about. MediaTek says there’s a gen-on-gen enchancment of as much as 42% right here, which ought to assist to offset the additional energy calls for of the efficiency upgrades and assist allow sturdy battery life.
Multitasking in video games and social name apps are particularly talked about.
Nonetheless, will this actually make sure you get a gaming expertise that’s on par with a PS5 or Xbox Sequence X? For many individuals, it’s the standard of the video games accessible on the Play Retailer and never efficiency that can decide this.
AI, AI, AI
As you possibly can think about, synthetic intelligence has performed an enormous position within the improvement of the Dimensity 9500.
The chipset consists of MediaTek’s new NPU 990, which has the Generative AI Engine 2.0 in-built. The corporate claims it helps double the velocity of output on LLMs (Giant Language Fashions) with 3 billion parameters, whereas decreasing loading speeds by 40 %.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
However MediaTek has additionally recognised the numerous environmental influence of AI, claiming it has decreased peak energy consumption for giant AI fashions by 40%. There’s additionally a giant emphasis on on-device AI processing, which doesn’t depend on internet-based cloud infrastructure and is usually thought-about safer.
However which units will it energy?
MediaTek’s press launch for the Dimensity 9500 launch is awash with huge efficiency, energy effectivity and AI claims. It stays to be seen whether or not these stand as much as scrutiny, plus how a lot of a distinction this makes to the top consumer.
Nonetheless, we already know that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will energy the Xiaomi 17 sequence, with the likes of the OnePlus 15, Honor Magic 8 sequence and Samsung Galaxy S26 sequence all anticipated to be among the many early adopters.
No such reveals have taken place for the Dimensity 9500 but, with MediaTek merely stating that the primary units “are anticipated to reach within the fourth quarter of 2025”.
If the Dimensity 9400 is something to go by, this shall be dominated by Chinese language producers akin to Oppo, Vivo and Realme. On the pill aspect, the Galaxy Tab S12 sequence can be doable subsequent yr.
Regardless, the Dimensity 9500 seems to be like an thrilling step ahead, with MediaTek actually taking the battle to Qualcomm. Nonetheless, look out for a response from the latter very quickly.
