The MediaTek Dimensity 9500 is the Android powerhouse you'd expect

What you need to know

• The MediaTek Dimensity 9500 is a 3nm, octo-core flagship chipset with a 32% performance boost over the Dimensity 9400.
• Its GPU is 33% faster and is capable of hitting 120FPS with raytracing.
• The NPU is 100% faster for LLM output and is designed to handle more AI tasks on-device.
• Flagship phones from Oppo and Vivo will use the Dimensity 9500 before the end of 2025.

MediaTek announced its new Dimensity 9500, a 3rd-generation 3nm TSMC chipset with no efficiency cores, on Monday. It will challenge the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 that Qualcomm plans to announce on Tuesday.

The Dimensity 9500 uses one Arm C1-Ultra core (4.21GHz), three C1-Premiums (3.5GHz), and four C1-Pros (2.7GHz), delivering a 32% CPU single-core boost and 55% improved single-core efficiency to hit the Dimensity 9400's old benchmarks. Multi-core improvements were slightly more subtle: 17% performance gains and 37% efficiency gains.

On top of faster benchmarks, the Dimensity 9500 adds four-lane UFS 4.1 support, offering the same doubled read/write speed as 4.0, but with greater efficiency, 40% faster Large AI Model loading, and zoned storage. Overall, the 9500 is 30% more efficient at "multitasking," such as when gaming and using Discord simultaneously.

MediaTek promises Android phones with the Dimensity 9500 will take only 42ms on average to launch apps, with "industry-leading responsive scrolling performance" and "jank free" animations. It even promises that the 9500 can handle a "simultaneous launch of 20 apps" if you're constantly swapping between them.

Its Mali G1-Ultra GPU delivers 33% improved peak performance and 42% improved efficiency to hit old benchmarks. MediaTek has also promised "console-level raytracing" that's 119% faster than the last-gen Immortalis-G925 GPU, hitting 120 FPS with raytracing enabled, as well as "AAA-level real-time rendering and immersive lighting effects."

MediaTek emphasized AI performance gains in its announcement. The new NPU 990 uses Compute in Memory (CIM), which MediaTek says is an industry-first that allows low-powered AI models and applications to run continuously on-device.

While MediaTek argues that the Dimensity 9500 is closer to delivering an "agentic AI," you can tangibly expect twice-as-fast token generation, on-device 4K image generation, and 50% reduced power consumption for on-device tasks. Practically, AI models like Gemini should run on-device applications much faster.

For image processing, MediaTek promises 200MP photos, 4K120 Dolby Vision videos with EIS, and 4K60 portrait videos.

Rounding out the list, the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 offers 5G, Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7 tri-band up to 7.3Gbps, and AI-enhanced dual-band GPS accuracy.

MediaTek's flagship Dimensity lineup sales have grown by 350% since 2022. While the Dimensity 9500 will mostly appear in flagship phones in Asia and Europe, Dimensity chips have expanded more widely in recent years — most notably on the Galaxy Tab S10 and Tab S11 series.

It'll be fascinating to see how the Dimensity 9500 compares to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for raw benchmarks; a leaked 9500 benchmark test showed the SoC clocked well below its 4.21GHz maximum. For now, we'll have to wait until the first Vivo and Oppo phones with the Dimensity 9500 are announced.

MediaTek has also announced that its next flagship chip — probably the Dimensity 9600 — will be built on TSMC's N2P process architecture in late 2026, with an 18% power boost and 36% increased efficiency.