The MediaTek Dimensity 1000 is the first mobile SoC to have a hardware-based AV1 video decoder

The MediaTek Dimensity 1000 offers a considerable number of reasons to be taken seriously as a premium product in 2020, not the least of which is integrated 5G support and the actual ability to measure up to the Snapdragon 865 and Kirin 990 SoCs. Now, the Taiwanese semiconductor OEM has highlighted another possible advantage to its uptake: AV1 video codec support.

This is a royalty-free modality to get high-quality video streams in one's app without the downside of large file-sizes. Google has implemented it for up to 4K/60fps playback on its own relevant services, although this is something normally reserved for Android TVs running certain Realtek or Broadcom chipsets.

However, MediaTek now asserts that phones running on the Dimensity 1000 will also be able to use AV1 on a hardware basis. Therefore, these devices would be able to exhibit the highest resolutions in their YouTube app's settings. It is just a shame there are not many of them around to test this out on as yet.