Honor takes the mid-range genre out of space with its latest phone: 8,000 mAh battery and flagship chipset

Honor is swinging by just to casually redefine the mid-range smartphone genre and, well, that's not an exaggeration. The Honor 500 series is now official, consisting of:

• Honor 500
• Honor 500 Pro

Want to know what's so disruptive about it? Let's dive deeper.

Camera goodies

The Honor 500's launch was announced mere hours ago, on Monday. The company says this series is all about offering "flagship-class portrait imaging", "all-scenario live capture capabilities", "extended endurance" and a cool OS experience.

Pretty bold claims, but the Honor 500 actually seems like a solid all-rounder.

True, the Honor 500 can't match a dedicated camera flagship (like, say, the Vivo X300 Pro), but comes with a solid 200 MP "AI Ultra-Clear" main camera, which means Honor is relying on the imaging system to produce alluring images.

The main camera utilizes a 1/1.4-inch CMOS sensor – that's large for a mid-ranger – and a 12 MP ultra-wide camera. In contrast, the Honor 500 Pro model offers a step-up: a 50 MP telephoto camera with boosted image stabilization performance. That's really cool.

The Honor 500 duo also comes with something that Honor calls "industry-first": front-and-rear Live portrait modes. What this does is that it adds background blur, beauty effects, and atmosphere to every frame. There are lots of distinct filter modes in the camera app, plus, 4K-to-Live conversion. This enables 4K videos to be made into 4K Live clips for sharing on social media.

Power… and more power

Under the hood, the Honor 500 duo gets two completely different chipsets:

• Honor 500: Snapdragon 8s Gen 4
• Honor 500 Pro: Snapdragon 8 Elite

That's a welcomed move – after all, if a device is being presented as "Pro", it should offer Pro performance (something that is a given with the Elite chipset). Both phones are paired with Honor' Phantom Engine 3.0, which predicts graphics demands with precision and adjusts rendering accordingly for gaming sessions.

The real deal is the 8,000 mAh battery cells on the Honor 500 and the Honor 500 Pro, though. Supporting 80W charging speeds (yeah, that's way faster than your flagship iPhone 17 Pro or the Galaxy S25 Ultra), the Pro also offers 50W wireless charging. An 8,000 mAh battery is what could potentially make the Honor 500 a two-day phone.

I know this still sounds like sci-fi to some people, but the future now.

The Honor 500 offers a ton of display goodies, too: eye protection features, motion sickness relief features, and more.

Does it look familiar?

As I've pointed out before, on the outside, the Honor 500 is resembling a mixture of iPhone 17 and Pixel 10 with those rounded corners and the Visor-like camera island on its rear panel.

I'll never be able to unsee this, but the Honor 500 is built elegantly enough to catch the public's eye. It's got a slim 7.75 mm profile with super narrow 1.05 mm bezels on the side of its screen. It's got IP68, IP69, IP69K water and dust resistance, which means this thing should be durable.

Pity it's a China-exclusive

If you don't care about top-notch camera performance or the absolute best hardware, well, what do you care about?

Battery life. And solid performance. Coincidentally, this is what the Honor 500 promises to excel at.

Pity it's a China-exclusive phone series, though. Retail prices start from 3599 RMB for the Honor 500 Pro and 2699 RMB for the Honor 500. When converted directly, this is ~$507 and ~$380.

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