Amy Guesner, the assistant vice president for corporate sales at MediaTek, made an exciting announcement on Thursday. The executive announced that an unnamed premium segment phone powered by a MediaTek flagship application processor (AP) will launch in the U.S. later this year. The announcement was made during an event for analysts. Guesner’s announcement was the subject of a tweet posted by consultant @nirave on “X.”
One possibility is that the U.S. bound premium segment phone to be powered by a flagship MediaTek chipset will be made by Motorola. The Motorola Edge (2022) featured a mid-range Dimensity chipset although the high-end Edge+ (2022) was equipped with a Snapdragon AP. Remember, this phone will be in the premium price segment so while it is possible that Motorola is behind this mystery handset, it could be a new model made specifically to take on Apple and Samsung in the U.S.
A mystery U.S. phone in the premium segment will come to market later this year with a flagship MediaTek chipset
MediaTek’s current flagship chip is the Dimensity 9300 AP which has a unique configuration made up of four high performance Cortex-X4 CPU cores and four performance Cortex-A720 CPU cores. The chip does not use any low-powered high-efficiency cores for less complex tasks. On May 7th, MediaTek is expected to introduce the Dimensity 9300+ which has one faster Cortex-X4 core. It also will feature an enhanced AI Processing Unit (APU).
If the chipset in the unnamed premium U.S. phone isn’t the Dimensity 9300+, it could be the Dimensity 9400 SoC, which is currently being prepped for a fourth quarter release. The Dimensity 9400 will also eschew the use of high-efficiency cores. One rumored configuration includes the use of one Cortex-X5 high-performance CPU core, three Cortex-X4 high-performance CPU cores, and four Cortex-A720 performance CPU cores.
Most likely, the flagship MediaTek chip to be used in the premium U.S. phone will depend on its release date. If the device is launched well before the fourth quarter starts in October, we’d expect it to sport the Dimensity 9300+. A fourth quarter release would point to the use of the Dimensity 9400. A previous rumor that made the rounds last month called for the Dimensity 9400 to be the largest smartphone chip and said that it could carry 30 billion transistors. To put that in perspective, the Apple A17 Pro SoC used on the iPhone 15 Pro line contains 19 billion transistors. The higher a chip’s transistor count, the more powerful or energy-efficient the chip usually is.