MediaTek just joined an exclusive club. The company’s new Dimensity 9600 Pro becomes the latest flagship chip based on the 2nm process node. It’s the third chip to enter that territory after Samsung’s Exynos 2600 (2nm) and Apple’s A20 Pro (2nm).
It’s built specifically to handle the kind of always-on, multi-step AI tasks flagship phones are increasingly expected to run entirely on the device, without leaning on the cloud.
So what does the 2nm jump actually unlock?
The headline number is a 61% cut in multi-core power draw, which could translate to longer battery life with batteries similar to those in Dimensity 9500-powered smartphones. That efficiency comes from a genuinely new eight-core layout, two ultra-fast cores clocked to 4.55GHz alongside six supporting big cores, running on 2nm silicon.
Paired with 17% faster single-core and 15% faster multi-core performance than last year’s chip, the Dimensity 9600 Pro should deliver more responsive, snappy day-to-day performance.
MediaTek also brought LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage to a phone chip for the first time, both aimed at keeping data flowing fast enough for on-device AI work, not just app switching.
| Dimensity 9600 Pro vs. Dimensity 9500 | |
| Process node | 2nm (first announced) |
| Single-core performance | +17% |
| Multi-core performance | +15% |
| Multi-core power efficiency | −61% power draw |
| GPU peak performance | +27% |
| GPU power draw at peak | −24% |
| Ray tracing speed | +18% |
| Always-on AI power use | −40% |
| Memory support | LPDDR6 (new) + LPDDR5X |
| Storage support | UFS 5.0 (new) |
What about the AI, gaming, and camera upgrades?
The new NPU 1090 can run AI models up to 30 billion parameters directly on the phone, which isn’t a small feat. This is MediaTek’s pitch for personalized, “digital twin”- style assistants. A second efficiency-focused NPU cuts always-on AI power use by 40%.
Gaming gets a real bump too. The new GPU pushes console-grade visuals at up to 185fps, with 27% higher peak performance while still maintaining 24% lower peak power draw. On the camera side, the Imagiq 1290 ISP adds 4K resolution at 240 frames per second for ultra-slow-motion footage and 17 stops of dynamic range.
MediaTek says phones built on the 9600 Pro, alongside a more affordable 9600M sibling, should arrive sometime this quarter. Rumored smartphones to feature the new chipset include the Vivo X500 Pro Max and the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max.
