Qualcomm made headlines earlier this week by revealing the name of its new flagship processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen Elite 5, which is expected to debut on September 23.

(Update, September 22: The MediaTek Dimensity 9500 is official!)

But not to be outdone, rival chipmaker MediaTek is swooping in to steal the spotlight with a flagship announcement of its own — and it’s happening a day earlier. In a move straight out of the playbook of one-upmanship, MediaTek confirmed today, September 17, that its next top-shelf system-on-chip will be unveiled on September 22 in China. While the company is keeping the name under wraps for now, it has been widely speculated that the SoC in question will be none other than the MediaTek Dimensity 9500.

🌐⚡We're getting ready to reveal a new generation of MediaTek Dimensity. A flagship for what's next. Coming soon.

🚀Check back on September 22 at 14:00 GMT+8.#MediaTek #MediaTekDimensity #Flagship pic.twitter.com/TNEvMb2A6f

— MediaTek (@MediaTek) September 17, 2025

MediaTek announces the launch date of what’s reported to be the Dimensity 9500

The chipset is expected to stick with an all-big-core CPU architecture, boasting a total of eight cores. We can, of course, anticipate some major performance leaps over its predecessors, the Dimensity 9400 and Dimensity 9400 Plus, which power devices like the OPPO Find X8 and vivo X200 series.

A teaser for the upcoming vivo X300 and vivo X300 Pro, which will use the Dimensity 9500, recently showcased an impressive Antutu Benchmark score of over 4 million. The processor also made a guest appearance on Geekbench back in June, where it reportedly featured one Travis X930 core at 3.23GHz, three Alto cores at 3.03GHz, and four Gelas cores at 2.23GHz. For graphics, it’s said to rely on a Mali-G1-Ultra MC12 GPU clocked at 1000MHz. Rumors hint at a new NPU, too, with a staggering 100 TOPS, promising a significant boost in AI performance.

Score AnTuTu V11 Mediatek Dimensity 9500 pic.twitter.com/JVZoiGXMJ7

— RAIHAN HAN (Informasi Gadget) (@raihanhan121) September 10, 2025

Performance comparison: Rumored Dimensity 9500 (right) vs predecessor

In related news, MediaTek shared that it has successfully developed a chip using TSMC’s advanced N2P process. This is the next phase of TSMC’s 2nm technology, which uses nanosheet transistors for better performance and power efficiency. Don’t expect to see this in a commercial device anytime soon, though.

The first chip with TSMC’s N2P process is scheduled to arrive in late 2026. If anything, the timing confirms that the upcoming MediaTek Dimensity 9500 won’t be on a 2nm process, though its successor likely will.

When we compare it to the current N3E process, the new N2P promises some big improvements. You’re looking at an 18% jump in performance with the same amount of power, a 36% cut in power consumption at the same speed, and a 1.2x increase in how many transistors you can pack into the same space. In other words, the future of mobile chips is all about getting more power while using less energy.

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