In summary
- Honor 500 launches 24 November
- Specs for Honor 500 and Honor 500 Pro leak
- Huge battery, decent performance
Honor has officially confirmed the launch date for its Honor 500 smartphone, but a full spec leak has somewhat spoiled the party.
The Chinese brand has taken to Weibo to announce that the Honor 500 series will be unveiled on 24 November at 7:30pm China time – that’s 11:30am here in the UK.
Pre-order links are are already live in Honor’s home country. It would be relatively exciting news, were it not for an unfortunate leak that dropped just an hour or so later on the same channel.
Honor 500 Pro specs
Established tipster Digital Chat Station has also been hitting Weibo with some Honor 500 news. This time it’s a full spec lowdown for both the Honor 500 and the Honor 500 Pro.
The range-topping Honor 500 Pro will be fronted by a 6.55-inch 2736 x 1264 (1.5K) 120Hz flat display, complete with 3840Hz PWM dimming. There’ll be a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor stashed underneath.
Honor
Build quality should be on point, with an all metal frame and comprehensive IP68,IP69 and IP69K dust and water resistance certification. That display will be flanked by stereo speakers. We already know that the design will have something of the Google Pixel 10 about it.
It’ll run on a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which has been the go-to flagship chip for much of 2025. This will be backed by a huge-sounding 8000mAh battery, together with 80W wired and 50W wireless charging.
On the camera front, expect a 200MP 1/1.4-inch main sensor backed by a 12MP ultra-wide and a 50MP Sony IMX856 3X telephoto lens. There’ll also be a 50MP selfie cam.
Honor 500 specs
The vanilla Honor 500 should look similar, with the same display and battery, and with largely the same camera set-up. However, it’ll be powered by a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 SoC, like the Poco F7 that launched in June.
We were impressed with the latter’s level of performance. It was capable of running any game we threw at it, and on maxed out graphical settings at that.
The Honor 500 will also lose that dedicated telephoto camera, as well as the wireless charging provision. That seems like a fair trade-off when you consider that the Honor 400 retailed for around £400 at launch.
We were seriously impressed with the previous model, doling out a 4.5 out of 5 review and praising its premium looks, great cameras, excellent battery life, advanced AI features, and decent software support. The Honor 500 could well be a killer mid-ranger.
The Honor 400 Pro didn’t wow us quite as much, as it wasn’t quite such a great value proposition, but it still had a lot to offer.
