Snapdragon leads the top tier, but MediaTek earns trust as the chipset pick for phones with tight budgets. The brand lifts its game through the Dimensity line and pulls closer to premium power without big prices. That progress sets the stage for a couple new chips, Dimensity 9500s and Dimensity 8500. Both aim to bring strong speed, smart power use, AI tools, camera technology, play, and solid wireless links. Let’s break down how they fit into the wider phone space.
Dimensity 9500s
MediaTek brought its flagship mobile chipset, the Dimensity 9500 SoC, to the market in September last year. The brand expands that lineup with the Dimensity 9500s.
At the core, the Dimensity 9500s runs an Arm Cortex-X925 Ultra core at 3.73 GHz. Alongside it sit three Cortex-X4 premium cores and four Cortex-A720 performance cores. On the graphics side, the chip uses an Immortalis GPU with clock speeds under the flagship G1-Ultra MC12.
In terms of raw muscle, the 9500s, with 3nm process, sits below the 9500. Even so, the chip delivers strong output and steady power. It gives phone brands a path to near-flagship power at lower prices. With phone costs set to rise as brands chase 2nm chips and RAM prices climb, I see this move as a smart call from MediaTek.
The Redmi Turbo 5 Max, known as the POCO X8 Pro Max in global markets, takes the lead as the first phone with the Dimensity 9500s.
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Dimensity 8500
Dimensity 8500 moves to a lower tier with a 4nm build and an all big core design that uses eight Cortex-A725 cores. A Mali-G720 GPU handles graphics.
The Dimensity 8500 supports LPDDR5X four-channel RAM and UFS 4 storage. It also uses a MediaTek eighth-gen NPU 880 that runs large language and image generation models.
Just like the Dimensity 9500s, the Dimensity 8500 brings strong power but sits below MediaTek flagship chips.
Bottom line
MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500s and 8500 compete with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and Samsung’s Exynos 2500 on performance.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Elite targets top-tier flagship phones, while the standard 8 Gen 5 aims at a more affordable flagship segment. Despite the difference, the non-Elite chip shares a lot of traits with its higher-end sibling. With the Dimensity 9500s, MediaTek stands a good chance of attracting smartphone makers who want near-flagship power at lower cost. The year should be interesting as MediaTek and Qualcomm battle for attention.
Grigor Baklajyan is a copywriter covering technology at Gadget Flow. His contributions include product reviews, buying guides, how-to articles, and more.