Home / SoC Comparison / Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 or MediaTek Dimensity 8550: What's better?

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5

vs

MediaTek Dimensity 8550

SoC Comparison Result

Below are the results of a comparison of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and MediaTek Dimensity 8550 mobile processors based on key performance characteristics, as well as power consumption and much more.

Advantages

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5

Higher Frequency: 3800 MHz (3800 MHz vs Up to 3.4GHz)

MediaTek Dimensity 8550

Newer Launch Date: May 2026 (November 2025 vs May 2026)

Basic

Qualcomm

Label Name

MediaTek

November 2025

Launch Date

May 2026

SmartPhone Flagship

Platform

SmartPhone Mid range

System Level Cache (SLC)

5MB

TSMC

Manufacturing

SM8845

Model Name

MediaTek Dimensity 8550

2x 3.8 GHz, 6x 3.32 GHz

Architecture

1x Arm Cortex-A725 @ 3.4GHz + 3x Arm Cortex-A725 @ 3.2GHz + 4x Arm Cortex-A725 @ 2.2GHz

Cores

Octa (8)

3 nm

Technology

3800 MHz

Frequency

Up to 3.4GHz

GPU Specifications

Adreno 840

GPU name

Arm Mali-G720 MC8

1200 MHz

GPU frequency

512

Shading units

3.0

OpenCL version

1.4

Vulkan version

3840 x 2540

Max display resolution

WQHD+

12.1

DirectX version

Connectivity

Cellular specific functions

5G/4G Dual SIM Dual Active, SA & NSA modes; SA Option2, NSA Option3 / 3a / 3x, NR FR1 TDD+FDD, DSS, 256QAM VoNR / EPS fallback, Smart Network Suite 3.0, Subway Mode 2.0, DSDA 2.0

Cellular technologies

5G-Adv, 3GPP-R16, Sub-6GHz (FR1), 2G-5G multi-mode, 5G-CA, 4G-CA, 5G FDD / TDD, 4G FDD / TDD, TD-SCDMA, EDGE, GSM

Downlink functions

FR1 LB DL 4x4 MIMO, 3CC up to 220MHz

Up to 10000 Mbps

Download speed

Up to 5.17Gbps

Modem power saving technologies

R16 UL Enhancement, MediaTek UltraSave 3.0+

Uplink functions

256QAM FR1 UL 2CC, FDD UL TxD

Wi-Fi antenna

2T2R

LTE Cat. 24

4G support

4G FDD / TDD, 4G-CA

Yes

5G support

5G-Adv, Sub-6GHz (FR1), SA / NSA, 5G-CA

6.0

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 5.4

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi 6E (a/b/g/n/ac/ax)

GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, NAVIC

Navigation

GPS L1CA+L5+L1C, BeiDou B1I+B1C+B2a, Glonass L1OF, Galileo E1+E5a, QZSS L1CA+L5, NavIC L5

Memory Specifications

LPDDR5X

Memory type

LPDDR5X

4800 MHz

Memory frequency

9600Mbps

4x 16 Bit

Memory Bus

4ch

Miscellaneous

L2 Cache

1MB + 3x 512KB + 4x 256KB

L3 cache

6MB

- AAC
- AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV

Audio codecs

1x 320MP

Max camera resolution

320MP; 3x 32MP @ 30FPS

UFS 4.0, UFS 4.1

Storage type

UFS 4 + MCQ

8K at 60FPS, 4K at 120FPS

Video capture

4K60 (3840 x 2160)

- H.264
- H.265
- AV1
- VP8
- VP9

Video codecs

Encode: H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC); Decode: H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), VP-9, AV1

8K at 60FPS, 4K at 120FPS

Video playback

4K @ 60FPS

Display refresh rate

Up to 144Hz

Dual display support

Dual screen support (dual DSI)

ARMv9.2-A

Instruction set

AI features

LLM Booster, Google Gemini Nano V3 support, Diffusion Transformer support, NeuroPilot hardware compression, mixed-precision INT4 quantization, speculative decoding support

Hexagon

Neural processor (NPU)

MediaTek NPU 880