In mid November 2021, when MediaTek announced its flagship processor, Dimensity 9000, the Taiwanese chip-maker didn't reveal the next-gen flagship partners that would utilise its top-tier hardware.

One month on from that announcement and it's all change: Oppo has revealed that it will be the first phone-maker to feature Dimensity 9000 in its next-gen Find X device in 2022.

Precisely which device that will be is up for debate, however, as Oppo has also just revealed its own in-house MariSilicon, which is said to feature in the forthcoming Find X4 series. That, however, is a 6nm process NPU (neural processing unit) designed for image processing. There's no distinct reason that Oppo's NPU can't handshake with MediaTek's 4nm process CPU in that device though.

So why is the use of Dimensity 9000 of interest? Because of some of the headline features it facilitates. With support for camera resolutions up to 320-megapixels, could the Oppo Find X4 feature the highest-resolution mobile camera we've seen yet? There's also support for up to 144Hz screen refresh rate (at WQHD+ resolution), suggesting that the flagship handset could utilise a superfluid panel too.

It's not only Oppo that is backing MediaTek's latest flagship, though, with Redmi confirming the K50 will also house Dimensity 9000. That's particularly interesting as that handset will, in essence, be a variation on the Xiaomi 12 - the latter device which is already confirmed to be using Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 instead.

In addition there's official support from Vivo and Honor, although precisely in which of those companies' 2022 handsets isn't yet clear (we're guessing X80 Pro+ and View 50). But it shows one thing: MediaTek's rise through the ranks is very real and, in Dimensity 9000, the company has a very real prospect of showing off what a big-hitter it can be.