Every chip deserves a ‘plus’ follow-up, though it would be nice to have it in a phone you can actually buy
Not to be left out of the plus-based fun its competitor is having, MediaTek has also just revealed its own new Dimensity chip with a similar upgrade scheme. The Dimensity 9000+ is the same chipset we got excited for (but can’t actually buy in a smartphone in the US), plus a handful of small performance boosts.
So far as I can tell, based on prior briefings and public documentation, the only real changes to the Dimensity 9000+ are some adjustments to the big X1 core’s clock speed (from 3.05GHz to 3.2GHz) and some unspecified adjustments in GPU performance (probably via a similar clock increase). Cumulatively, MediaTek says that this will result in a 5% performance boost in CPU and a 10% increase in GPU performance.
Other specs named so far remain the same as the original Dimensity 9000, with the specs that persist included together with these new changes below:
| CPUs | 1x Cortex X2 (now at 3.2Ghz) + 3x A710 (2.85GHz) + 4x A510 |
| GPU | Mali G-710 MC10 |
| Cache | 8MB L3 cache plus 6MB “system-level cache” |
| RAM | LPDDR5X |
| ISP | Imagiq 790 triple 18-bit ISP |
| APU | 4+2 core APU |
| Modem | Release 16 w/3CC CA, no mmWave, DSDA |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Misc | AV1 decode up to 8k (no encode), displays up to 144Hz WQHD+ or 180Hz FHD+ |
MediaTek says that phones which will use the new chip will land in Q3 2022.
While many of us got excited about the Dimensity 9000 when it was announced last year as the company’s first true “flagship” chipset, that enthusiasm has dwindled away a bit since the chip hasn’t come to the US in any products yet — or many phones period. A Samsung device is rumored, but there’s no guarantee it will end up here. Initially, the lack of mmWave might have been to blame for the chip’s failure to enter the US market, but now that Verizon finally has some useable mid-band 5G, even Apple was able to skip including it on the recent iPhone SE. T-Mobile has also expressed interest in the past when I asked about releasing a mmWave-less “flagship” phone, claiming it could be a possibility. So the lack of mmWave on the Dimensity 9000+ isn’t the sort of carrier-imposed marketing issue it was for the Dimensity 9000 in 2021.
Benchmarks aren’t an ideal metric for comparing performance, but MediaTek appeared to be bringing some serious heat to Qualcomm, and a performance preview of an early engineering sample was encouraging. Hopefully, the new Dimensity 9000+ is available in more phones in more places to help encourage a little competition in the flagship smartphone chipset space.
