The OnePlus 10 could surprise everyone by replacing the type of chip OnePlus has been using since its first flagship with another brand.

As reliable leaker Ice Universe wrote in a new tweet, OnePlus may be one of the first companies to receive MediaTek's new Dimensity 9000 system-on-chip. The chipset has just been announced and is spec-worthy flagship silicon, so it is not one of the cheaper Nord devices, but one that will be included in the OnePlus 10.

Until now, OnePlus has always used Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips. This changed earlier this year when the OnePlus Nord 2 launched with the Dimensity 1200-AI. With 8GB or 12GB of RAM, depending on the model, this mid-range chip performed on par with comparable Snapdragon 7 series chips and outperformed similar Android phones in some tests.

The Dimensity 9000 (via GSMArena) is notable for several world firsts: the 5nm Apple A15 chip in the iPhone 13, the Galaxy S21, OnePlus 9, and many other flagship Compared to the Snapdragon 888 found in Android phones, the chip is manufactured in a 4-nanometer process, making it denser.

The 9000 chip also supports up to 320MP photography, supports three simultaneous 4K video recordings, and is the first chip to use Bluetooth 5.3 for better and more stable connections to peripherals, MediaTek claims. MediaTek claims that this The benchmark scores achieved with the chip appear to beat "Android flagships" and "2021 flagships" (which could refer to the Snapdragon 888 and A15).

Ice Universe also cites Vivo, Realme, Xiaomi, Oppo, Motorola, and Samsung as using the Dimensity 9000 chip. Samsung is a particular surprise here, as Samsung manufactures its own Exynos series of chips. What exactly they have in mind for this new MediaTek chip is a mystery at this point, so hopefully the new rumors will fill in the gaps soon.

The chip we expected to see in the OnePlus 10, the Snapdragon 898, has not yet been officially announced. However, it is likely that most of next year's Android flagships, including Samsung's Galaxy S22, will run on this chip. Of course, it is also possible that OnePlus will still use this chip; since the OnePlus 10 will likely have a basic and a Pro model, the plan may be to further differentiate the two devices by putting a different chip in each.

The OnePlus 10 is slowly becoming clearer with more and more leaked information. We have seen an apparently new design for the OnePlus 10 Pro, with a distinctly square camera block, again bearing the name of Hasselblad, the Swedish camera manufacturer that helped OnePlus tune the camera for the OnePlus 9 series.

As for the phone's specs, we have heard that it may not differ that much from the OnePlus 9. However, a fresh design with only three rear cameras (instead of the OnePlus 9 Pro's four), the introduction of a ColorOS-derived operating system (due to OnePlus' merger with related phone maker Oppo), and a new 5x optical zoom telephoto camera, this still feel like a significantly different phone.

As for a release date, the OnePlus 10 could actually have two. Recent rumors suggest that OnePlus intends to do a China-only release of the phone in January or February, slightly earlier than usual. A global release could be around March, the usual month for OnePlus' flagship phones to be announced.