Now even MediaTek's cheap chips are embarrassing the Tensor G5 in one major area

The Google Tensor G5 chipset seen in Pixel 10 phones is pretty capable, but it pales in comparison to processors in other flagship Android phones. Now, MediaTek has announced the 4nm Dimensity 7500 processor, and this budget phone chip also shows up Google’s Tensor chips in one significant area.

The MediaTek Dimensity 7500 is a long-overdue upgrade for the Dimensity 7000 series, starting with the octa-core CPU. Expect four Arm C1-Pro cores clocked at 2.6GHz, as well as four Arm C1-Nano cores clocked at 2GHz. The company says you should expect performance boosts like 68% faster video transcoding, 30% faster app switching, and 11% faster app installs. The firm also claims that popular apps are 5-9% more efficient, while popular games see efficiency gains of 4-7%. Either way, these new CPU cores are an upgrade over the Dimensity 7400 and 7300, which used positively ancient Cortex-A78 and Cortex-A55 cores.

This CPU also uses newer cores than the Tensor G5’s CPU. Google’s latest flagship chip uses an octa-core CPU consisting of one Cortex-X4 (3.78GHz), five Cortex-A725 (3.05GHz), and two Cortex-A520 cores (2.25GHz). The Pixel 10 phones should deliver better single-core performance thanks to the Cortex-X4 and its high clock speed. However, MediaTek’s use of newer medium and little cores suggests that Dimensity 7500 phones could significantly narrow the gap or even close it in some scenarios. The Dimensity 7500’s C1-Nano cores should also sip less juice than the Cortex-A520 cores, with Arm previously saying the Nano was 26% more efficient. So don’t be surprised if phones with this new MediaTek chip last a little longer than the Pixel 10 devices in some use cases.

What else should you know about Dimensity 7500?

The new chip also sports an Arm Mali-G625 MC2 GPU, which is effectively a massively cut-down version of the Immortalis-G925 (with far fewer shader cores and key omissions like ray tracing). MediaTek didn’t disclose specific gaming performance gains, but this should be a solid improvement over the Mali-G615 MC2 seen in previous Dimensity 7000 series chips. I’m not expecting the GPU to get even close to the Tensor G5 and its PowerVR DXT-48-1536 GPU, especially as the Pixel 10 phones beat Dimensity 7300 and 7400 phones by a mile in this regard.

Otherwise, the new processor also has an upgraded NPU (NPU 850) that delivers twice the AI performance of the previous generation. MediaTek says the Dimensity 7500 supports on-device speech recognition, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, notification summaries, and smart replies. There’s no word if the chip supports Gemini Nano, but we’ve asked MediaTek about this.

In terms of connectivity features, the Dimensity 7500 offers a Release 17 modem topping out at 5.2Gbps, Bluetooth 5.4, long-range Bluetooth (up to ~1km), and Wi-Fi 6E. You should also expect 4K HDR video capture, support for 200MP 14-bit cameras, and higher-resolution secondary displays (a boon for foldables).

In any event, we’re glad MediaTek is finally offering a more modern chipset for budget Android phones after several generations of underwhelming releases. There’s no official word on the first Dimensity 7500 phones, but history suggests that some of these handsets could cost less than $400. Even if the GPU and NPU aren’t on par with the Tensor G5, this chip still delivers a newer CPU that should get very close to $800+ Pixel flagships. And that likely says more about the state of Google’s silicon than anything else.