MediaTek’s next flagship processor is already trailing Qualcomm in an early CPU showdown. Geekbench 7 results put MediaTek’s MT6995, expected to launch as the Dimensity 9600 Pro, behind Qualcomm’s SM8975, which is tipped to become the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, in both single-core and multi-core performance.
The MediaTek chip scored 3,242 in single-core and 11,132 in multi-core testing. Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship reached 3,582 and 12,247, giving it roughly a 10% lead in both tests.
Neither chip is shipping in retail phones yet, so this is still an early signal rather than a verdict on the next generation of Android flagships.
What stands out is that Qualcomm leads in both tests by a similar margin. That makes the result harder to dismiss as one unusually strong score.
Geekbench still measures only part of the performance picture. It tells us little about how these chips will behave during longer workloads, where power limits and heat can change the result.
For raw CPU performance, though, Qualcomm currently has the stronger showing. That’s notable given how MediaTek has been closing the flagship performance gap in recent generations.
Qualcomm’s result comes with one important caveat. The benchmark appears to come from Qualcomm reference hardware rather than a finished commercial phone, so the setup may not match what buyers eventually get.
There’s uncertainty on the MediaTek side too. Geekbench identifies the chip as MT6995 inside an OPPO device, but it doesn’t confirm the final retail model or how close the hardware is to its eventual launch configuration.
Pre-release Geekbench results can reflect different clock speeds and tuning before retail hardware arrives. The gap is still worth watching, but there’s room for both sides to move once final phones start shipping.
MediaTek isn’t suddenly out of the race. Its next flagship chip is posting strong numbers on its own, but Qualcomm has set the higher bar in this early comparison.
If that advantage survives into retail hardware, MediaTek will enter the next flagship cycle chasing Qualcomm on CPU performance.
The real comparison starts when both chips are inside finished phones running final software. Until then, Qualcomm has the early lead, but this race is far from settled.
Merely days after the iPhone Duo hit the shelves, images of broken screens on the phone started popping up across social media. Until now, it’s been unclear what’s causing the line of defective pixels that appears vertically along the crease, as well as horizontally, on the phone’s inner display.
Apple has finally acknowledged the issue, which has shown up on iPhone Duo units owned by customers as well as demo units in stores. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, Apple says that not all iPhone Duo units are affected and that those that are tend to show the display fault early on. The company added that users who experience problems with their iPhone Duo display should contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Not long ago, Apple treated independent repair like an act of outright hostility. The Cupertino giant locked down parts with serial-number pairing, while repair tools remained firmly out of reach of anyone outside its authorized repair network. More importantly, the company waged a legal and lobbying battle against right-to-repair legislation.
I've covered enough of these fights over the years to know what a shift looks like. That's why what happened in October 2026 genuinely caught me off guard. The day the iPhone Duo went on sale, what may be the most mechanically complex iPhone to date, Apple pulled off a surprising about-face. It published teardown-style repair manuals for a handful of major components.
Apple's first foldable phone is now on shelves, in short supply, but with an unreal amount of buzz around it. After all, it's the first foldable iPhone, and there's plenty that this phone gets right. But there's also a lot that is either broken or underwhelming. What's peculiar is the dialogue around this phone, and how it has completely overshadowed every other attempt at making a phone with a similar form factor.
I've spent some time with the iPhone Duo, and I've used the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for almost three months now. In my opinion, Samsung deserves more credit. When the Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrived earlier this year, it was celebrated in some circles and ridiculed in others for supposedly copying what Apple would eventually deliver with the iPhone Duo. The dialogue was pretty odd, for multiple reasons. Samsung has been making foldable phones for years, so claiming that it copied a product Apple hadn't even launched was simply absurd.