MediaTek just announced that its new Dimensity 8500 smartphone processor will launch in China on January 15 at 3pm local time (12:30pm IST). They dropped the news on Weibo, but haven’t given out the official specs yet. Still, leaks are everywhere, and people are already buzzing about what this chip can do.
The Dimensity 8500 picks up where the 8400 left off—remember, that one showed up in December 2024. This new chip looks set to fuel some of the best mid-range and so-called flagship-killer phones in 2026.
So what’s under the hood?
Reports say MediaTek is using TSMC’s 4nm process for the Dimensity 8500. That should mean better power efficiency and less heat. The CPU layout? Pretty interesting: you get one main core running at 3.40GHz, three mid-level cores at 3.20GHz, and four efficiency cores at 2.20GHz. It seems like MediaTek wants to balance raw performance with battery life, making this chip a good fit for gaming and daily use.
Competition ready
The graphics side looks like a big step up too. The Dimensity 8500 is supposed to come with a Mali-G720 MC8 GPU. If the leaks are right, this means a clear leap in gaming and graphics performance. People say the chip even scored over 2.2 million points on AnTuTu, and there’s talk its GPU could beat Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and 8s Gen 4 in some cases.
Which phones will use this chip first?
MediaTek has not yet confirmed any, but word is that Honor plans to launch a phone—maybe called the Honor Power 2—with the Dimensity 8500 and a huge 10,000 mAh battery. Xiaomi’s also rumoured to be working on the 17T, which might use this chip too.
If you are wondering how it stacks up to the Dimensity 8400, that older chip had Arm Cortex-A725 cores and introduced MediaTek’s Agentic AI Engine for smarter apps. The 8500 is set to take all that further: better performance, stronger graphics, and even more advanced AI tricks.
