Last year, MediaTek unveiled its Dimensity 9500 chipset . Built on TSMC’s 3nm process, this is the company’s latest flagship chipset. However, “flagship” usually means expensive, and if you’d rather not spend so much but want performance close to the Dimensity 9500, you’re in luck because MediaTek has unveiled the Dimensity 9500s .

MediaTek Dimensity 9500s could usher in cheaper flagships

Now, despite the MediaTek Dimensity 9500S sharing a very similar name to the Dimensity 9500, it’s not quite the same chipset . For starters, it’s not going to be as powerful. The new 9500s features an octa-core setup. This includes 1x Arm Cortex-X925 with speeds up to 3.73GHz, 3x Arm Cortex-X4, and 4x Arm Cortex-A720.

The Dimensity 9500 on the other hand, has a different and more powerful configuration. It features 1x C1-Ultra clocked at 4.21GHz, 3x C1-Premium, and 4x C1-Pro. The GPU on the 9500S is also not as powerful. It sports an Immortalis GPU with lower clock speeds compared to the flagship G1-Ultra MC12.

But despite it being slightly less powerful in comparison to the 9500, the 9500s is still a very capable chipset . It would also allow handset makers to bring near-flagship-level quality performance at slightly lower prices. Considering that prices of phones are expected to go u p, thanks to more companies pushing for 2nm chipsets and the soaring prices of RAM, this is a smart play by MediaTek. It also follows Qualcomm’s strategy of launching the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 , a slightly less powerful variant of the Snapdragon 8 Elite 5.

The Redmi Turbo 5 Max (also known as the POCO X8 Pro Max globally) will be the first phone to use the new chipset.

But there’s more

In addition to the 9500s, MediaTek also announced a new mid-range chip. This comes in the form of the Dimensity 8500. The chipset features a configuration of all Cortex-A725 cores, with speeds of up to 3.4GHz. MediaTek claims that we can expect a 7% improvement in performance.

The chipset also supports LPDDR5X memory with speeds of up to 9600Mbps. It also uses a new Mali-G720 MC8 GPU, with up to 25% higher peak performance compared to previous generations. It will be more efficient as well, by cutting as much as 20% power consumption at peak loads.

There is also support for AI, thanks to the NPU 880 chip. It is capable of supporting a variety of LLMs and offers AI-powered imaging tools.