MediaTek's New Dimensity 9500s & 8500 Chips: Flagship Performance for Affordable Phones

MediaTek’s latest chipset launches feel less like routine silicon refreshes and more like a statement of intent. With the Dimensity 9500s and Dimensity 8500, the company is pushing hard to narrow the gap between premium flagships and the more affordable phones that dominate global sales. The Dimensity 9500s is the more ambitious of the two. Built on a 3nm manufacturing process, it prioritises efficiency as much as brute force. The most striking choice here is MediaTek’s “all big core” CPU design. Instead of relying on small efficiency cores for background tasks, the 9500s leans entirely on high-performance cores. At the top sits a Cortex-X925 ultra core clocked at up to 3.73GHz, supported by Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 cores. In real-world terms, this means the chip is designed for sustained performance. Heavy gaming, multitasking, and on-device AI workloads should run smoothly without the aggressive throttling that often plagues powerful chips under load. Gaming is clearly a priority. The Immortalis-G925 GPU brings advanced ray tracing support along with MediaTek’s latest frame rate management tech, MAGT 3.0. The promise here is smoother gameplay that balances performance and power draw, rather than draining the battery within an hour of play. AI is another major focus. The Dimensity 9500s is tuned for on-device generative AI tasks, moving beyond cloud-dependent features. This includes practical uses such as instant photo enhancements, real-time transcription, and summarising long notes or meetings. MediaTek is positioning this chip as ready for the next wave of AI features that phone makers are keen to promote. Camera capabilities also get a boost. Support for 8K Dolby Vision video recording and a revamped image signal processor suggest improved motion tracking and more consistent results in challenging scenes. The Dimensity 8500, meanwhile, targets a more mainstream audience. Built on a 4nm process, it uses eight Cortex-A725 cores clocked up to 3.4GHz. This setup favours efficiency while still delivering plenty of performance for everyday use. MediaTek claims the Mali-G720 GPU offers a 25% performance uplift over the previous generation while consuming 20% less power. Importantly, features like ray tracing and AI-powered photography are still present, making the 8500 a compelling option for phones sold at scale.