(Image credit: MediaTek)

If you've been waiting to hear what's going to power your next Android phone, then this is the week. MediaTek has pulled the covers off its latest Dimensity hardware on the eve of Qualcomm announcing its next Snapdragon chip.

In what's become a familiar dance, Qualcomm and MediaTek line up their hardware before new Android handsets are announced. While there are a few more days before Qualcomm reveals all the details, we now know exactly what the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 looks like.

The new flagship Dimensity chip offers a boost to smartphone buyers, with MediaTek citing significant gains over the previous generation. That includes 32% higher single core performance and 17% higher multi-core performance. This is delivered with lower power consumption, saving you battery life, which is something we all want.

MediaTek says that Dimensity 9500's ultra core has a power consumption that's 55% lower at peak performance than the previous generation, while there are savings in gaming too.

What can new Android phone owners expect?

Diving into some of the specifics, the new hardware has a big NPU (neural processing unit) boost in the NPU 990, claiming a 56% reduction in power consumption at peak performance. It also claims to be able to render 4K generative AI images on the device.

With AI swinging in to offer many more consumer-facing features – as well as background functions of the phone – the NPU that handles this type of operation is one of the areas that's seen increased interest in recent years.

Gaming gets a boost not just from increased efficiency, but offers up to 120fps and ray tracing to make games look even more glorious, with the company saying the new hardware offers "console-level quality gaming". While that might be a stretch, it will be great to see what this new hardware brings.

Elsewhere, there's support for up to 200-megapixel camera capture, 30fps continuous focus tracking and 4K 60fps portrait video. That means you're getting not just smooth and detailed video, with that bokeh effect too. Of course, while the hardware may support it, you need a manufacturer to actually offer that feature to see the advantage.

It's not just in the most obvious areas – peak performance, gaming, the camera – where the Dimensity 9500 brings a boost: connectivity is turned up a notch, with the claim that AI reduces power consumption, while faster Wi-Fi, Bluetooth call enhancement and more seamless data delivery is also promised.

The Dimensity 9500 will start appearing in devices in the fourth quarter of 2025, which could be as soon as next month, Vivo and Oppo are apparently lined up as manufacturers for those devices.