Why use older high-end chips? These new SoCs could power affordable flagships

We’ve seen a host of affordable flagship-level smartphones in the last couple of years, using previous-generation Snapdragon flagship silicon to achieve this price point. These devices include the POCO F3, OnePlus 9R, and realme GT 2.

Now, MediaTek has announced the Dimensity 8000 and Dimensity 8100, with the company calling it a “little brother” to the Dimensity 9000 flagship SoC. In fact, MediaTek told Android Authority that the chipsets take aim at the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 870, saying that the processors deliver performance that’s more in line with the Snapdragon 888.

Dimensity 8000 series: What to expect?

The new processors are largely identical to each other, offering 5nm TSMC designs, octa-core CPU layouts (four Cortex-A78 and four Cortex-A55, 4MB L3 cache), a Mali-G610 MC6 GPU, and a tri-core fifth-generation APU (two performance cores and one efficiency core).

The chip designer says you should expect a “significant boost” for the GPU over last year’s Dimensity 1200 SoC, as well as a two-fold performance boost for the APU.

More reading: A guide to MediaTek smartphone processors

MediaTek is also offering a 5Gbps image signal processor (ISP) with 200MP single camera support, support for LPDDR5 RAM at 6,400Mbps, and a sub-6GHz modem supporting 3GPP Release 16 connectivity.

Other notable specs include Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6E, a maximum refresh rate of 168Hz at FHD+ resolution (or 120Hz at WQHD+), and AV1 decoding.

There are a couple of differences between the two SoCs though, with the Dimensity 8100 enjoying higher clock speeds for the Cortex-A78 cores (2.85GHz versus the Dimensity 8000’s 2.75GHz) and ~10% higher frequencies for the GPU and APU.

What else should you know?

MediaTek says the first phones with the Dimensity 8000 series will show up in “the next couple of weeks,” adding that it expects to see wider global adoption than the Dimensity 9000.

MediaTek vice-president and general manager of marketing Finbarr Moynihan told journalists that while it isn’t in charge of device pricing, he expected to see Dimensity 8000 series phones priced between roughly $400 and $700.

This wasn’t the only news the company had to share, as it also confirmed that the first mmWave chipset for the US market would be revealed in H1 2022 as well as its first mmWave mid-range phone in the US in H2 2022.