Another leak points to OnePlus readying a phone without Snapdragon SoC

OnePlus has relied on Snapdragon silicon since its inception, with everything from the OnePlus One to the OnePlus 9 series using Qualcomm chipsets. We heard a report earlier this year that the manufacturer will use MediaTek power for the first time, and now another source has seemingly corroborated this claim.

Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station has alleged that OnePlus is readying a device with the Dimensity 1200 chipset (MT6893), although the tipster didn’t seem to dish out any other details in the post. Check out the rough machine-translated version below.

This post largely lines up with Android Central‘s report back in March, claiming that the OnePlus Nord 2 will ship with a Dimensity 1200 processor. The only bit of info missing from Digital Chat Station’s leak is whether it’s indeed the Nord 2.

The Dimensity 1200 would be a pretty solid upgrade over the Nord’s Snapdragon 765G for the most part. It packs an octa-core CPU (four Cortex-A78 cores, four Cortex-A55 cores), a maximum refresh rate of 168Hz, software-driven ray tracing support, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi 6, and 5G+5G dual-SIM support. You’re also getting a capable photo/video experience on paper, featuring support for 200MP shots, “staggered” 4K HDR video recording, and AV1 decoding.

In saying so, a OnePlus phone powered by the new MediaTek flagship SoC would have no mmWave support (MediaTek’s 5G tops out at sub-6GHz for now), while the Dimensity 1200 uses the same Mali-G77 MP9 GPU as last year’s Dimensity 1000 series. That GPU lagged behind the likes of the Snapdragon 865 series and Exynos 990 on paper, and will likely lag behind the latest upper mid-range silicon from Qualcomm and Samsung.

Still, MediaTek silicon has a reputation for being a little cheaper than its big-name counterparts. So hopefully the same rings true for the Dimensity 1200 and OnePlus is able to pass those savings on to the consumer.