When MediaTek managed to put its next generation chipset to the starting post ahead of its competitor from Qualcomm, we believed that smartphones powered by them will get to our hands this year itself. However, it appears now that phones powered by the Dimensity 9000 flagship may arrive only in February.
From a phone user's perspective, this is a bit underwhelming as smartphones with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SoC should be arriving as early as December and most definitely in early 2022. You can take a quick look at a bunch of handsets with this flagship chipset already scheduled for launch.
Coming to MediaTek, news about the the possible delay came in a report on GSMArena, which quoted an unnamed tipster on Weibo. The tipster claimed that the first smartphone powered by the 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC would hit the shelves in February.
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What about Snapdragon 8 Gen1?
In comparison, the Xiaomi 12 is rumored to launch on December 12, though all we have for now is a tipster's social post to confirm this date. Others devices that are speculated to carry Snapdragon 8 Gen1 chipsets include the Samsung Galaxy S22, OnePlus 10 Pro, Redmi K50 Pro, Realme GT 2 Pro, Oppo Find X4 and the iQoo 9.
This is something that we, as smartphone lovers, cannot really fathom. Because, in the last 12 months or so, MediaTek shifted focus away from powering the cheaper devices and shifted to the mid-to-top end segment with a view to democratize 5G. This helped the company to reach a 40 per cent marketshare and become part of the club that has Qualcomm and Samsung.
What's special about MediaTek Dimensity 900?
The new chipset was announced at the MediaTek conference a week ago where it was announced that the processor was built with a 4nm fabrication process, making it the only chipset in this category.
The SoC also boasts several firsts – including the first to include Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connectivity and the first sub-6GHz 5G mobile chipset to house a Cortex-X2 core that can power the new always-connected Arm-based computing devices. This core is clocked at up to 3.05Ghz.
Other features of this extreme chipset include LPDDR5X memory with a speed of up to 7500 Mbps, a multimode 5G/4G modem, and a downlink of up to 7Gbps and 3CC carrier aggregation.
However, we feel that though the company did take on the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SoC series, we need to wait for some more time to check the performance. However, the new chipset did surpass benchmark scores of Android flagships with similar scores as the 2021 SoCs from Qualcomm and Apple's A15 Bionic chipset.
The fact that the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 is built on a 4nm process could mean that the chipset is ahead of the iPhone 14's microprocessor, said to be the A16 Bionic that is built on a 5nm process. These terms refer to the process of crafting the chipset where a smaller number means the processor can be condensed, making it capable of more power and better efficiency.
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