Analyst(s): Olivier Blanchard
Publication Date: September 24, 2025
MediaTek has launched the Dimensity 9500, its most advanced mobile chipset, delivering significant gains in AI, gaming, and efficiency. OPPO’s upcoming Find X9 series will debut the platform, highlighting MediaTek’s push to strengthen its position in flagship smartphones.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Launch of MediaTek Dimensity 9500, featuring a third-generation All-Big-Core CPU design.
- Performance, AI, imaging, and gaming improvements versus Dimensity 9400.
- OPPO Find X9 series debut with Dimensity 9500 and Trinity Engine enhancements.
- Competitive positioning against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
The News: MediaTek has introduced its new flagship chipset, the Dimensity 9500, bringing upgrades in on-device AI, gaming, compute, and energy efficiency. It debuts with a third-generation All-Big-Core CPU, featuring one 4.21GHz ultra core, three high-end cores, and four performance cores. Compared to the Dimensity 9400, it delivers up to 32% better single-core and 17% better multi-core performance. The chipset will first appear in OPPO’s Find X9 series later in 4Q25 and is also set to power upcoming Vivo devices. The launch signals MediaTek’s intent to compete directly with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the flagship smartphone market.
Will MediaTek Dimensity 9500 Raise the Bar for Flagship Smartphone AI and Gaming?
Analyst Take: Performance and Efficiency Gains – The Dimensity 9500 shows MediaTek continuing to gain momentum in the premium smartphone space, with AI acceleration, gaming capabilities, and efficiency gains driving its competitive engine. With notable performance gains and early adoption from OPPO and Vivo, the chipset is being positioned as a credible rival to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
Case in point: the Dimensity 9500’s third-generation All-Big-Core CPU shifts focus toward balancing performance with efficiency, and achieves 32% higher single-core and 17% higher multi-core results than its predecessor, the Dimensity 9400, while reducing peak power consumption by a whopping 55%.
Multitasking also improves, with 30% better efficiency during gaming and audio calls. These enhancements make the chipset more flexible and capable of handling demanding real-world tasks with minimal battery drain, reinforcing MediaTek’s competitive position in high-performance smartphones, not just mainstream price tiers.
Gaming and Graphics Enhancements
The Arm G1-Ultra GPU also helps the platform deliver 33% higher graphics performance and 42% better power efficiency. Perhaps most impressive, particularly for gamers, is that it supports 120fps (frames per second) raytracing. (It also supports MegaLights in Unreal Engine 5.6, and Nanite in Unreal Engine 5.5.) In OPPO’s Find X9, these graphics features will be supported by advanced cooling systems to maintain stable frame rates under heavy use. This combination of features helps further narrow the gap between mobile and console gaming. With MediaTek’s massive footprint in Asia markets, enabling AAA-level visuals on smartphones is a critical competitive objective for the company – more so than in the US, where mobile gaming is not quite as mature just yet.
AI Acceleration and NPU Advances
The Dimensity 9500 also integrates the ninth-generation NPU 990 with Generative AI Engine 2.0. This enables it to deliver 2x the compute power and introduce BitNet 1.58-bit model processing. This translates into up to 100% faster large language model output (for 3 billion parameters), supports 128K-token text handling, and enables 4K ultra-HD image generation – all with up to 56% lower peak power usage. (This ultra-efficient NPU with compute-in-memory architecture further reduces energy needs while allowing continuous AI model operation.) These improvements raise the bar for on-device AI capabilities, which are quickly becoming the new competitive battleground for handsets, particularly in flagship and premium tiers.
Imaging and Display Innovations
Cameras still matter. Thanks to its Imagiq 1190 ISP, the chipset enables RAW-domain pre-processing, 200MP photo capture, 30fps focus tracking, and cinematic 4K at 60fps portrait video. Its MiraVision Adaptive Display adjusts brightness and color to match ambient conditions, maintaining clarity while reducing eye strain. While implementation is ultimately up to the handset OEM, these upgrades at least provide a foundation that balances advanced imaging with display performance for flagship devices. The fact that Oppo is on board with this new platform is a very good sign that the Dimensity 9500 is getting closer to its goal of playing more competitively than ever in the flagship SOC space.
We can expect competition with rival Qualcomm to intensify into 2026, particularly in Asia and EMEA, where both companies are evenly matched. The US market is a different story, however, as Qualcomm’s firm hold on the flagship and premium SOC market remains, at least for now, very difficult to disrupt. More on that soon.
What to Watch:
- Competition with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in late 2025, including comparative performance and AI benchmarks.
- Adoption momentum of the Dimensity 9500 in OPPO’s Find X9 series and Vivo’s X300 lineup.
- How device OEMs leverage the chipset’s gaming, AI, and imaging capabilities for differentiated user experiences.
- Potential consumer response to on-device generative AI features such as 4K image generation and long-form text processing.
- Sustainability of MediaTek’s performance-per-watt advantage under real-world workloads.
See the complete press release on the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 on the MediaTek website.
Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.
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Image Credit: Mediatek
Author Information
Olivier Blanchard is Research Director, Intelligent Devices. He covers edge semiconductors and intelligent AI-capable devices for Futurum. In addition to having co-authored several books about digital transformation and AI with Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman, Blanchard brings considerable experience demystifying new and emerging technologies, advising clients on how best to future-proof their organizations, and helping maximize the positive impacts of technology disruption while mitigating their potentially negative effects. Follow his extended analysis on X and LinkedIn.
