MediaTek Dimensity 9500 vs Apple A18 Pro: Benchmarks and Specs

The 2025 smartphone processor race is officially underway. MediaTek has fired the first shot by announcing the Dimensity 9500, with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 expected to follow soon. While these new chips promise a significant leap over their predecessors, it should be interesting tos see how they stack up against Apple's last generation silicon. In this comparison, we pit the new MediaTek Dimensity 9500 against Apple's A18 Pro to see which comes out on top.

MediaTek Dimensity 9500 vs Apple A18 Pro: Geekbench Score

MediaTek officially unveiled the Geekbench scores of the Dimensity 9500 chipset during the launch event. The chipset scored an impressive 4,007 points in single-core and 11,217 points in multi-core in Geekbench 6.4. Compared to the Apple A18 Pro, which we tested on the iPhone 16 Pro Max, scored 3,467 in single-core tasks and 8,550 in multi-core tasks. It's worth noting that the official scores that MediaTek revealed are slightly on the higher side than what the SoC might score in ideal conditions.

From the data, the Dimensity 9500 performs around 16% faster in single-core tasks and 31% faster in multi-core tasks than the A18 Pro in single-core tasks. This is thanks to two more cores in the Dimensity 9500. Going by MediaTek's official numbers, it's the first processor to surpass Apple's single-core CPU performance in the A19 Pro. However, we suggest you hold your horses and wait for our official tests.

The credit for Dimensity 9500's fast performance goes to Arm's latest C1 cores, which are not only faster but also power-efficient. The C1 Ultra performance core is clocked at 4.21GHz versus 4.05GHz on the Apple A18 Pro.

It's worth noting that these figures are officially shared by MediaTek. We'll soon put the Dimensity 9500 through its pace and verify the numbers on an actual consumer smartphone.

MediaTek Dimensity 9500 vs Apple A18 Pro: Specs Comparison

The Dimensity 9500 is manufactured on TSMC's improved N3P process, whereas the Apple A18 Pro is manufactured on TSMC's 3nm N3E process node. The Dimensity 9500 features Arm's latest C1-series CPU cores, while Apple has a 6-core custom CPU. Here are all the specifications of the chipsets in detail.

Apple's reign as the undisputed king of smartphone processors had been deeply impacted by Qualcomm's Nuvia team. But with MediaTek upping its game with the Dimensity 9500, which performs on par with even the latest Apple A19 Pro on the iPhone 17 Pro, Apple truly needs to do something exceptional next year to stand out.