MediaTek Dimensity 9500: New Challenger to The Android CPU Throne
The first shot for the 2026 Android CPU war has been fired. MediaTek announced its Dimensity 9500 mobile processor with 32% better single-core CPU performance, 33% better GPU performance, while promising around 40% lower power consumption. Keep reading to learn more about the flagship SoC.
These past years have seen increased competition between MediaTek and North American rival Qualcomm in the Android space. While MediaTek now leads in smartphone market share, it is still fighting to dethrone the Snapdragon processors when it comes to overall performance. And with Snapdragon Summit 2025 scheduled to begin on the 23rd of September (AKA tomorrow), what better time for MediaTek to launch its contender for 2026?
MediaTek Dimensity 9500: All big-core CPU design
Like previous flagship generations, the Dimensity 9500 uses an “all big-core” CPU design, which means it doesn’t include what is usually called “efficiency cores”—a strategy that Qualcomm also adopted for its Snapdragon 8 Elite.
New on the Dimensity line are the recently announced ARM CPU and GPU cores, with a new naming convention. The CPU tops at 4.21 GHz on the sole C1-Ultra core, with three C1-Premium cores at up to 3.5 GHz, and four C1-Pro cores at up to 2.7 GHz. It should prove a significant jump in performance, compared to the Dimensity 9400+’s maximum 3.73 GHz. According to MediaTek, the Dimensity 9500 should be up to 32% faster in single-core tasks, and around 17% in multi-core processing.
| MediaTek Dimensity 9500 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite | Samsung Exynos 2500 | Google Tensor G5 | MediaTek Dimensity 9400 | Apple A19 Pro | Apple A19 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime core | 1x ARM C1-Ultra @ 4.21 GHz | 2x Oryon @ 4.32 GHz | 1x Cortex-X925 @ 3.3 GHz | 1x Cortex -X4 @ 3.78 GHz | 1x Cortex-X925 @ 3.62 GHz | 2x Apple @ 4.26 GHz | 2x Apple @ 4.26 GHz |
| Performance core | 3x ARM C1-Premium @ 3.5 GHz | 4x Oryon @ 3.53 GHz | 2x Cortex-A725 @ 2.75 GHZ 5x Cortex-A725 @ 2.36 GHz |
5x Cortex-A725 @ 3.05 GHz | 3x Cortex-X4 @ 3.3 GHz | ||
| Efficiency core | 4x ARM C1-Pro @ 2.7 GHz | 2x Cortex-A520 @ 1.8 GHz | 2x Cortex-A520 @ 2.25 GHz | 4x Cortex-A720 @ 2.4 GHz | 4x Apple @ 2.60 GHz | 4x Apple @ 2.60 GHz | |
| RAM | LPDDR5x-10667 4x 16-bit @ 5333 MHz (85.4 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-10667 5333 MHz (85.4 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x | LPDDR5x | LPDDR5x-10667 4x 16-bit @ 5333 MHz (85.4 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-9600 4x 16-bit @ 4800 MHz (75.8 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-8533 4x 16-bit @ 4266 MHz (68.2 GB/s) |
| GPU | 12x ARM Mali G1-Ultra | Adreno | AMD Radeon RDNA2 (4091 GFLOPs) |
PowerVR DXT-48-1536 (1536 GFLOPs) |
12x ARM Immortalis-G925 (4952 GFLOPs) |
6x Apple GPU | 5x Apple GPU |
| 5G modem | MediaTek | Snapdragon X80 (10/3.5 Gbps) |
Exynos (12.1/3.6 Gbps) |
Exynos 5400i | MediaTek (7/3.5 Gbps) |
External Snapdragon | External Snapdragon |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 |
FastConnect 7900 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 UWB |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 |
Apple N1 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6 Thread |
Apple N1 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6 Thread |
| Process node | TSMC N3P | TSMC N3E | Samsung 3GAP | TSMC N3 | TSMC N3E | TSMC N3P | TSMC N3P |
In the graphics department, the Dimensity 9500 uses ARM’s new GPU core, the Mali G1-Ultra, in a 12-core configuration. The new system promises up to 33% higher performance in games, with 42% better power efficiency.
The Dimensity 9500 GPU includes technologies such as frame generation to offer smoother graphics, as well as ray-tracing, with double the number of ray-tracing units compared to last year’s Dimensity 9400. MediaTek also added support for Unreal’s MegaLights and Nanite technologies for more realistic graphics in mobile games using the popular game engine. MegaLights implements dynamic lighting and shadows, while Nanite increases the level of detail in objects and scenery.
AI features for you and me
With the AI trend showing no signs of slowing, the Dimensity 9500 packs even more features to improve not only in-device generative AI and agentic AI (in which the phone makes decisions for you), but also changes that can potentially improve daily usage as well. One example is the increased bandwidth available for storage using the UFS 4.1 standard. MediaTek opted to double the number of lanes to the memory chips to improve AI model loading, but that change can also help improve app loading performance and record high-resolution video, for example.
The NPU for AI processing promises double the performance compared to the previous generation, while being more energy efficient at the same time. The NPU can also help in tasks beyond the generative AI trend, being used, for example, to improve camera focusing and better use available network connections to consume less power and have better latency (less delay/lag).
Speaking of connections, the Dimensity 9500 supports 5 carrier aggregation (5CC), which uses more “lanes” to the cell tower to improve connection speeds by up to 15% in ideal conditions.
According to MediaTek, we can expect phones powered by the Dimensity 9500 to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025. If the rumors are true, Oppo and Vivo should be among the first brands to carry the new chip. Samsung has been slowly adopting Dimensity chips as well, with the Dimensity 9400 being used on the recently announced Galaxy Tab S11 series.
