MediaTek's CEO confirmed it would launch its next-gen flagship smartphone AP, the Dimensity 9400, sometime in October. While an exact date isn't known, historical precedent states it could be before October 21, which is when Qualcomm plans to show off the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Digital Chat Station now has new information about MediaTek's next offering.

The leaker has heard "from a friend" that the Dimensity 9400 is slated to arrive with a 30% performance uplift. Apparently, the Taiwanese chipmaker worked closely with Arm to develop its Cortex-X925 CPU core codenamed Blackhawk. Plus, it is a lot more efficient than its predecessor and supposedly uses only 30% of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's power.

MediaTek adopted an all-P-core design with the Dimensity 9300 and that is set to continue with the Dimensity 9400. However, it came at the cost of poor thermals; something that the added power efficiency will help offset. That, combined with Samsung's 10.7 Gbps LPDDR5x modules, should make it a formidable competitor in the smartphone AP market.

Our benchmark database shows the Dimensity 9300 scores 2,207 and 7,408 in Geekbench 6.2's single and multi-core tests. A 30% performance improvement implies the Dimensity 9400 would score around 2,869 and and 9,630. Its single-core performance is close to that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (2,884/8,840) and it understandably takes the lead in multi-core. Both are within spitting distance from the Apple A17 Pro, which scores 2,915 and 7,222 points in the benchmark.

Then again, all three chips are said to be manufactured on TSMC's N3 class node, effectively leveling the playing field. The real interloper this time around is the Exynos 2500. Widely believed to be the start of Samsung LSI's redemption arc, the Samsung Foundry 3GAP-made chip could surprise us all thanks to it employing GAAFET (Gate All Around Field Effect Transistors) technology instead of FinFET. That, and its RDNA 3-based iGPU could potentially make it a gaming powerhouse.