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MediaTek has always been in the shadow of Qualcomm when it comes to flagship smartphones. However, the company has been taking on the Snapdragon chip maker in the premium segment with its Dimensity series of SoCs. Now, MediaTek just announced its new Dimensity 9000+ flagship SoC. It has some improvements over the Dimensity 9000 that launched back in February this year.
MediaTek has been gaining ground on Qualcomm over the years, but it’s been resigned to the mid-range and budget Android smartphone markets. The company was able to sell more chips than Qualcomm in Q4 of 2021 thanks to those markets, but that’s not stopping MediaTek from aiming for the premium market.
Now, MediaTek just announced the Dimensity 9000+ SoC
The MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC was the company’s answer to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset released by Qualcomm. It’s able to go toe-to-toe with the Snapdragon chip and keep pace with it, and that’s something we all like to see from MediaTek.
Now, the company just unveiled a new “+” variant of the chip with some improvements over. For starters, the Dimensity 9000+ is built on a 4nm process. It uses one ultra-Cortex-X2 core clocked at 3.2GHz (in the Dimensity 9000, it’s clocked at 3.05GHz). Accompanying that are three super Cortex-A710 cores and four efficiency Cortex-A510 cores. This covers both the heavy lifting and the lightweight stuff.
This chip setup should provide a 5% boost in CPU performance. That’s not a gigantic leap, but it’s still welcome to see gains with a mid-cycle release. The first generation launched only four months ago.
On the GPU side of things, the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ uses the ARM Mali G710 MC10 GPU. With this GPU onboard, we’re looking at a 10% boost in GPU performance, which is a respectable jump.
There will be improvements in other departments as well
A big part of a camera’s performance has to do with the processor. The Dimensity 9000+ uses the MediaTek Imagiq 790 image processor. It can support up to 320MP and simultaneous triple camera 18-bit HDR video recording. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a 320MP camera anytime soon, but that’s still really powerful. The 9Gpixel/s ISP supports 4K with HDR and noise reduction. It also helps with low-light photography.
The 3GPP Release-16 5G Modem helps improve 5G reception. SoCs come with the modem built-in, so the quality of the chip also impacts the quality of the signal reception.
When it comes to display quality, the MediaTek MiraVision 790 WQHD+ displays (2960 x 1440) at 144Hz. While that’s impressive, it also supports FHD+ displays at up to 180Hz.
There are more improvements over the Dimensity 9000 that will make this chip a true competitor to the latest Snapdragon chips. We should, hopefully, see some phones launch with this chipset in the near future.