With the competition for flagship phones in China nearly over for the year, all eyes are now on the next-generation chipsets that will power the “sub-flagship” segment. While Qualcomm is expected to unveil the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 by the end of the year, the launch schedule for new chips from rival MediaTek has been leaked.
MediaTek’s New Monsters: Dimensity 9500e and 8500
According to reliable leaker Digital Chat Station (DCS), the first smartphones powered by MediaTek’s two highly anticipated new processors won’t be released until January 2026. These new phones are expected to come with flagship-level specifications and large batteries. These two new chipsets, which MediaTek is reportedly working on, will elevate mobile performance in different segments.
As its name suggests, the Dimensity 9500e is the more powerful of the two. The features of this chip are as follows:
- Core Speed: Main core speed up to 3.73 GHz.
- CPU Architecture: It will utilize one high-performance Cortex-X925, three Cortex-X4, and four efficiency-focused Cortex-A720 cores.
- GPU: An Arm G925 MP12 graphics unit clocked at 1612 MHz.
- Manufacturing Process: It will be manufactured using TSMC’s most advanced 3nm N3E process.
Designed for more affordable phones, the Dimensity 8500 is still poised to make a strong impact:
- Manufacturing Process: It will be based on TSMC’s 4nm process.
- Core Structure: It will feature an eight-core architecture built on ARM’s A725 architecture. It’s noteworthy that all cores are “big” cores.
- Speed: The main core is expected to reach 3.4 GHz, a small but significant increase from its predecessor, the Dimensity 8400, which clocked at 3.25 GHz.
- GPU and Performance: Graphics performance could improve thanks to the Mali-G720 GPU, clocked at around 1.5 GHz. The chip is reported to score around 2.2 million points in the AnTuTu benchmark.
With the arrival of these new chips, the bar for performance and battery life is expected to be significantly raised in the mid- to upper-range segment by early 2026.
