This brand-new chip has no little cores, could beat Snapdragon in mid-range phones

MediaTek has done a solid job over the years when it comes to chipsets for cheap Android phones, although Qualcomm has upped its game in recent years. Now, the Taiwanese chipmaker has announced what could be its most impressive mid-range chip in a long time.

MediaTek has revealed the Dimensity 8400 processor and the standout feature here might be the CPU. The chipset lacks little CPU cores altogether, featuring eight Cortex-A725 cores clocked at up to 3.25GHz. This approach is broadly similar to the latest flagship Android chips, which have dropped little cores as well. But it’s the first time we’ve seen this trend on a mid-range processor.

This layout, along with more cache, results in a claimed 32% boost to multi-core performance over the Dimensity 8300. The company also says peak power use has been reduced by as much as 44%. We’re keen to see what this means for everyday power consumption, though.

The Dimensity 8400 also offers a very capable GPU on paper, featuring Arm Mali-G720 MC7 graphics versus the previous chip’s Mali-G615 MC6 part. This translates into a claimed 24% boost to peak performance and 42% better power efficiency. The chip supports MediaTek’s Frame Rate Converter tech for frame interpolation too.

Dimensity 8400: What else to know?

As for AI capabilities, MediaTek says the NPU 880 silicon supports “mainstream” AI models. This apparently enables tasks like rewriting, “AI recording,” media generation, and smart replies. Much like the flagship-tier Dimensity 9400, the Dimensity 8400 supports the Dimensity Agentic Engine framework for developing agentic AI apps. Either way, you can expect an 18% efficiency boost in general and speed improvements across several categories.

Other notable features include a 12% reduction in power use for 4K HDR video recording, a 5G-Advanced modem with 5.17Gbps peak downlink speeds, and support for WQHD+ resolutions at 144Hz.

MediaTek says the first devices will launch before the end of the year. There’s no word if these initial phones will be available globally, though. For what it’s worth, the widely available POCO X6 Pro and Xiaomi 14T both used the Dimensity 8300. So we’re expecting the Chinese brand to adopt the Dimensity 8400.

In any event, the lack of Cortex-X cores suggests that the Dimensity 8400’s single-core CPU performance might not be on par with the last few generations of flagship chips. But the decision to drop little cores for medium cores suggests we could see multi-core performance on par with some current high-end processors.