A new The Nord 2 was released in 2021 as the first OnePlus smartphone to be powered by a MediaTek chip, specifically the Dimensity 1200. Its success birthed a more affordable version called the Nord CE 2 which was announced in February 2022. It also comes with a MediaTek chip but a less powerful one.
MediaTek and Qualcomm are the biggest names in the Android smartphone chip market. While Qualcomm used to be the undisputed market leader for years, MediaTek chipsets have now gotten significantly better, and in some cases, outperformed those from its closest rival. In 2021, it overtook Qualcomm and is now the global leader with the largest market share.
MediaTek's new Dimensity 8000 series is up to 200MP cameras, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, LPDDR5 RAM, and UFS 3.1 storage.
How Do They Stack Up Against The Competition?
The Dimensity 8000 series are not as powerful as Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The only MediaTek chipset that goes head-to-head with Qualcomm's flagship chip is the Dimensity 9000. However, the 8000 series' closest competitors are the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 888 Plus. MediaTek's new chips and Qualcomm's last-gen chips are built on the 5nm process. The Snapdragon 888 duo have the upper hand with their prime core which is the more powerful Cortex-X1, but their three Cortex-A78 performance cores are clocked way lower at 2.42 GHz when compared to the Cortex-A78 cores of the Dimensity 8000 series. Plus, while they use the same efficiency cores as MediaTek's new chips, they are clocked lower at 1.8GHz compared.
The GPU on the Dimensity 8000 series is a version of the Mali-G710 GPU in the Dimensity 9000 but with fewer cores. The Mali G610 GPU is significantly more powerful than the previous generation Mali G78 and Mali G68 GPUs announced in 2020 and it should narrow the gap between Arm GPUs and Qualcomm's Adreno GPU. However, only a benchmark result, as well as real-world usage, will be able to determine if it is better than the Adreno 660 inside the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 888+.
The Dimensity 8000 and the more powerful Dimensity 8100 which will power the OnePlus phone are impressive on paper and should also offer great real-world performance. OnePlus hasn't revealed which phone the chipset will power, but a likely device is the OnePlus 10R, the successor to the China and India-exclusive OnePlus 9R launched in 2021. The OnePlus 9R arrived with a Snapdragon 870 processor which is not as powerful as either of these two new chips. Another possible device is the Nord 3, the successor to the Dimensity 1200-powered Nord 2. Regardless of which OnePlus phone it is, it will most likely be announced first in China.
Source: MediaTek, OnePlus/Weibo