Honor 500 series debuts in China with Snapdragon chips and bigger batteries

The Honor 500 series has now been officially unveiled in China and features a design revamp that has some clear Apple inspiration with some key specs upgrades over the Honor 400 models.

The design of the Honor 500 and 500 Pro is clearly inspired by the iPhone Air with a separate camera visor/height on the back.

While none of the Honor phones are as thin or light as Air, they come with some impressive cameras and huge batteries. But when it comes to design, both versions of the 500 series feature an aluminum frame and a glass back. Each phone is 7.8mm thick, and they weigh 198g and 201g respectively. Honor also maintains the high level of durability of its predecessors with full IP68 and IP69K ingress protection.

The Honor 500 and 500 Pro feature a 6.55-inch LTPO OLED with 1,264 x 2,736px resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and 6,000 nits peak local brightness. Both the phones also bring in-display fingerprint scanners and 50MP selfie cameras.

The main differences come in the chipset and camera departments, where the 500 Pro maintains the edge thanks to its Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, paired with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, while the vanilla Honor 500 gets a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip.

Around the back, both Honor 500 variants bring a 200MP main shooter (1/1.4″ sensor) and a 12MP ultra-wide lens. The 500 Pro also brings a 50MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom.

The Honor 500 and 500 Pro feature 8,000mAh SI-C batteries with 80W wired and 27W reverse wired charging.

Both phones boot Android 10-based Majcos 10 and offer 8,000mah SI-C batteries with 80W wired charging. The Pro model also gets 50W wireless charging, and both phones support up to 27W reverse wired charging.

The Honor 500 and 500 Pro come in Aquamarine, Starlight Powder (Pink), Moonlight Silver, and Obsidian Black. Both the phones are currently on pre-order, with the first shipments expected to begin on November 27.

Honor 500 • Honor 500 Pro