MediaTek today (January 15th) announced the launch of two new mobile chips: the flagship Dimensity 9500s and the mid-range flagship Dimensity 8500. Both new products continue MediaTek's recent strategy of featuring an all-large core architecture, and with the support of TSMC's 3nm and 4nm processes, they aim to inject new momentum into the 2026 flagship smartphone market in terms of performance, generative AI applications, and connectivity.
Dimensity 9500s: Powered by 3nm process, with a main frequency of up to 3.73GHz
As the latest flagship product in the Dimensity family, the Dimensity 9500s is built using TSMC's 3nm process and its CPU architecture continues the all-large core design. Its specific configuration is as follows:
• One Cortex-X925 super core with a clock speed of up to 3.73GHz.
• 3 Cortex-X4 super cores.
• 4 Cortex-A720 cores.
This configuration, combined with flagship-level high-capacity cache memory and the Dimensity scheduling engine, achieves an ultimate balance between single-core burst power and multi-core multitasking.
In terms of graphics processing, the Dimensity 9500s is equipped with an Immortalis-G925 GPU, which supports hardware ray tracing technology. Through the built-in OMM ray tracing engine and MediaTek Frame Rate Converter 3.0 technology, it boasts a console-level lighting and shadow effect and can also support a display refresh rate of up to 165 FPS to meet the needs of gaming phones.
The Dimensity 9500s supports 5G network specifications that comply with the 5G R17 standard and four-carrier aggregation (4CC-CA), with downlink speeds up to 7Gbps. According to official data, its Bluetooth technology can achieve a maximum connection distance of 5 kilometers in the case of direct Bluetooth connection between mobile phones, which will be a major advantage for outdoor activities or emergency communication scenarios.
The AI component integrates a flagship-level NPU, optimized for generative AI inference and multimodal models, and supports AI photo editing (such as image enlargement and background removal) and real-time call summarization, enabling complex AI tasks to be handled directly on the device.
Dimensity 8500: A "Light Flagship" Computing Platform Designed for Gaming and Young Users
If you're not looking for the most powerful ultra-large core configuration, the Dimensity 8500 might be a more cost-effective choice. This chip is positioned as a "light flagship" and is built using a high-efficiency 4nm process.
Its CPU also uses an all-large core configuration, including 8 Cortex-A725 large cores with a maximum clock speed of 3.4GHz. It does not include a super-large core design, but the all-A725 large core configuration is expected to bring more stable sustained performance output and better power consumption control, making it suitable for young people who play games for long periods of time.
The GPU uses an eight-core Mali-G720 design, with peak performance improved by 25% and power consumption reduced by 20% compared to the previous generation design. Paired with the MediaTek NPU 880, it also supports mainstream large language modeling (LLM) and AI image generation (Stable Diffusion), and has practical camera functions such as AI reflection removal and glare suppression.
Analysis of viewpoints
The Dimensity 9500s, through its combination of Cortex-X925 and 3nm process, is clearly aiming to solidify its position in the top-tier Android flagship market. The Dimensity 8500, on the other hand, is positioned as a "near-flagship" design, pursuing more stable high-performance output through its all-A725 cores. This might be more attractive to mobile gamers than flagship chips that boast impressive benchmark scores but suffer from frequency throttling after just three minutes.
MediaTek has not yet announced the first wave of partner brands for the Dimensity 9500s and Dimensity 8500, but it is expected that brands including Xiaomi and Vivo will launch related application products.
