The name MediaTek is often linked to cheap, low-cost Android phones. But the company has made slow but steady progress in the more expensive and high-performance models. The release of the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chip is a big step in that direction.
The Dimensity 9200 is a system on a chip (SoC), which is what all smartphone chips are. This means that it has built-in features for wireless and cellular connectivity, graphics, and system performance, among other things.
This integrated approach is similar to Apple's Silicon or Qualcomm's Snapdragon. It allows for smaller designs, which are always important in mobile devices, longer battery life, and better power efficiency without slowing down speed.
MediaTek is advertising this mobile chip as the first in the industry to use an Armv9 Gen 2 architecture, which needs new cores. With help from three Cortex-A715 performance cores, a so-called "big" Cortex-X3 core can handle even the most difficult tasks.
The 9200 also has four "low-power" Cortex-A510 cores that help the battery last longer. The combination isn't sure to improve performance by 10% to 12% over the old Dimensity 9000, but it should reduce power use by a meaningful 25%.
Finbarr Moynihan, who is the GM and VP of Corporate Marketing for MediaTek, and I talked about the Dimensity 9200 at the launch last week. This conversation is shown in the video clip below.