Vivo X500 official: price, specs and release date

📌 Updated 21 September 2026 — The Vivo X500 is official. It starts at 5,499 yuan (around €715) for 12 GB + 256 GB and reaches Chinese stores on 24 September. The official spec sheet confirms the 3 nm Dimensity 9600M, the 7,500 mAh battery, 90 W wired and 40 W wireless charging, IP68 and IP69 water resistance and support for the Lipstick 200 extender.

Vivo unveiled its new generation of flagships in China on 21 September. It marks a decisive move towards flat displays and a complete overhaul of the naming scheme.

A generation skipped: goodbye X400, hello X500

The first significant change concerns the very name of this future smartphone family. Vivo is skipping the “X400” designation altogether and jumping straight to the Vivo X500 badge.

The marketing decision draws on a deeply rooted tradition in several Asian countries: tetraphobia. The number 4 is phonetically close to the word for “death”, which regularly pushes tech brands to avoid that numbering for their flagship products.

A distinct design for the standard model

It is one of the defining design choices of this generation: for the first time, Vivo introduces a clear visual split between the standard model and its Pro variants.

• Vivo X500 Pro and Pro Max: sport a large circular camera module centred on the back panel.
• Standard Vivo X500: takes a different approach with a substantial circular camera module placed in the upper-left corner.

Up front, the entire range goes for completely flat panels, dropping curved edges. Ultra-thin symmetrical bezels and slightly rounder corners deliver optimised viewing comfort and handling.

On 10 September, Vivo published official renders of all three models. On the X500, one detail stands out: the circular island does not sit directly on the back, it rests on a slightly raised rounded square plate. The lineage is obvious — this is the grammar of the 2022 Vivo X90, revisited.

The four colours fall into two families: two light, textured finishes — a pearly white and a speckled grey that catches the light — and two plainer ones, a very pale pink Vivo calls “dawn” and a deep black. Inside the disc sit three round openings and a rectangular window, the periscope mentioned above, along with the ZEISS signature and its T* mark — the anti-reflective coating the optics maker keeps for its best-corrected lenses.

Three screen sizes to cover every use case

The screen size split within the X500 series is as follows:

• Vivo X500 Pro (compact): 6.36-inch LTPO panel (1.5K resolution).
• Standard Vivo X500 (mid-size): 6.59-inch flat panel (1.5K resolution).
• Vivo X500 Pro Max (large format): huge 6.85-inch LTPO panel (2K resolution).

The whole series benefits from a refresh rate climbing to 144Hz, ensuring maximum smoothness for browsing and gaming alike.

On the X500, the 6.59-inch panel runs at 2,750 × 1,260 pixels (459 ppi), covers 100% of the P3 colour space with 1.07 billion colours and a claimed accuracy of ΔE ≈ 0.27. It peaks at 4,000 nits on 20% of the screen and 2,000 nits full-screen, drops to 1 nit at hardware level for night-time reading, and supports HDR10+.

7,500 mAh battery and 90 W charging

The Vivo X500 packs a 7,500 mAh battery (7,270 mAh rated), in a single cell, with 90 W wired charging, 40 W wireless charging and wired reverse charging.

On a mid-size device (6.59 inches, 211 to 213 g), that kind of capacity translates into very comfortable battery life. The X500 Pro and Pro Max share the same 90 W wired and 40 W wireless charging.

MediaTek Dimensity SoC and Sony LOFIC camera tech

Under the bonnet, Vivo is continuing its close partnership with MediaTek by launching the new generation of high-end silicon:

• The standard Vivo X500 carries a MediaTek Dimensity 9600M, built on 3 nm: that is what the unit photographed in hand on 13 September showed, and MediaTek made it official on the 15th.
• The Pro and Pro Max versions move up a tier with the Dimensity 9600 Pro.

The name is new; the chip much less so. The unit photographed by tipster Panda is Bald shows eight cores topping out at 4.21 GHz, the exact figure of the Dimensity 9500 we already sell in the Vivo X300. MediaTek settled the question on 15 September by publishing the Dimensity 9600M spec sheet: it is indeed a reworked Dimensity 9500 — still the brand’s 3 nm flagship processor, with the advantage of a chip that is already well run in.

Set side by side with the Dimensity 9500’s, the official spec sheet shows no hardware difference at all:

• Same process: TSMC’s 3 nm N3P node.
• Same processor: one C1-Ultra core at 4.21 GHz, three C1-Premium cores at 3.5 GHz and four C1-Pro cores at 2.7 GHz, with the same caches.
• Same graphics and same NPU: a Mali-G1 Ultra MC12 and the APU 990.
• Same memory and same imaging: LPDDR5X at 10,667 Mbps, four-lane UFS 4.1 storage, sensors up to 320 MP and 8K 60 fps video.

The changes lie elsewhere. The in-house scheduler moves to its third generation (Dimensity Scheduling Engine 3.0) to share work more effectively between processor, graphics and memory. In games, neural network rendering allows up to 185 frames per second, with the same MRFC 3.0 frame interpolation hardware as before. And the NPU now supports the Gemini Nano 4 and Qwen 3.5 Omni 4B models, along with a camera agent that suggests shots based on the scene.

For anyone choosing the X500, that is reassuring news: a chip whose drivers and thermal management have a year of refinement behind them, with refreshed AI features. The Pro models, for their part, get the Dimensity 9600 Pro, built on 2 nm and made official the same day.

The hands-on photo showed 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage, but the range actually starts at 12 GB + 256 GB and goes up to 1 TB. The memory is quad-channel LPDDR5X Ultra, the storage UFS 4.1, and Vivo adds up to 24 GB of RAM borrowed from storage.

On the software side, the device runs OriginOS 7, based on Android 17.

When it comes to photography, the Pro models set themselves apart with a 50-megapixel Sony main sensor featuring LOFIC technology (Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor). The component is specifically designed to handle high-contrast scenes (harsh backlighting, night shots in the city) by avoiding blown-out areas and preserving an unprecedented level of detail in the highlights.

Camera: Vivo confirms a Sony LYTIA-828 sensor and a Zeiss APO periscope

On 3 September, Han Boxiao, Vivo’s product manager, published the camera poster for the standard model, and it comes down to one line: “the main camera is Pro, and so is the telephoto”. Both optics are co-developed with Zeiss.

• Zeiss high-dynamic main sensor: a 1/1.28-inch Sony LYTIA-828. It is the largest main sensor ever fitted to a standard X-series model, and it is no stranger: it already sits in the Vivo X300 Pro we stock, with its 1.22 µm pixels and f/1.57 aperture. The standard model therefore inherits, unchanged, the main camera of the previous generation’s Pro.
• Ultra-wide: 50 megapixels. This module does not appear on the poster and is confirmed by the official spec sheet, with an f/2.0 aperture.
• Zeiss APO periscope telephoto: a 64-megapixel Sony LYTIA-610, and Vivo specifies that it is the same periscope chip as the X500 Pro’s. The APO label refers to apochromatic lenses, corrected so that the different colours converge at the same point: in practice, fewer purple fringes along backlit edges. It records 4K video at 120 frames per second.

Both sensors are rated at CIPA 5.5. That scale, set by the Japanese camera industry association, measures stabilisation in stops of shutter speed gained: 5.5 stops means a scene that would demand 1/60th of a second handheld stays usable at around 1/1.5th. This is gimbal-class territory, and applying it to both optics is what the poster’s “dual Pro” wording refers to.

A word on the megapixel count, which could mislead. The Vivo X300 of the previous generation carried a 200 MP main camera, a 1/1.4-inch Samsung ISOCELL HPB opening at f/1.69. The X500 drops to 50 MP, on a larger sensor and behind a lens with a comparable aperture (f/1.68). Sensor area and aperture govern how much light is collected, while resolution governs the level of detail in good light. Vivo has chosen the former, and that choice shows up mostly after dark.

The official spec sheet settles the last open points. The X500 does support the Lipstick 200 extender, which Vivo sells with the phone for 999 yuan more. The front camera is a 50 MP (f/2.0) autofocus unit, and image processing is handled by the in-house BluePrint V3+ chip. The periscope opens at f/2.55 with 3.1× optical zoom; the main camera and the periscope record up to 8K.

Vivo has also confirmed, across the whole series, a video toolkit no one expected on the entry model: 10-bit 4:2:2 encoding, support for the ACES colour system — the one film post-production pipelines are built around — and a native 8K Live output presented as a first. The AI photography assistant has been rebuilt as well.

What Vivo unveiled on 21 September

The official spec sheet of the Vivo X500 adds to what we already knew:

• Camera: 50 MP Sony LYT-828 main camera at 23 mm (Zeiss T* coating, CIPA 5.5 stabilisation), 64 MP Sony LYT-610 Zeiss APO periscope at 72 mm (85 mm on the Pro) with macro down to 15 cm, 50 MP ultra-wide and 50 MP autofocus front camera.
• Accessories: the Zeiss G2 extender (200 mm equivalent, the “Lipstick 200”) and the detachable viewfinder screen, sold separately.
• Battery: 7,500 mAh with a fifth-generation silicon anode, designed to cope better with the cold.
• Hardware: symmetrical speakers, a 15% larger vapour chamber, 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor and IP68 and IP69.
• Finishes: 8.15 mm thick, back and camera island cut from a single sheet of glass, aluminium frame.
• Software: OriginOS 7 based on Android 17, for which Vivo promises 72 months of smooth performance.

Vivo X500 price and availability

Vivo has announced the X500’s prices in China:

• 12 GB + 256 GB: 5,499 yuan (around €715)
• 12 GB + 512 GB: 5,999 yuan (around €780)
• 12 GB + 1 TB: 6,999 yuan (around €910)

These are Chinese prices including Chinese VAT; the euro conversion is indicative and does not account for import taxes or a European retailer’s margin.

Sales start in China on 24 September, in four colours: black, white, grey and a pale “dawn” pink. The phone measures 157.01 × 74.49 × 8.15 mm and weighs 211 to 213 g.

How the range will evolve and what comes next

Vivo unveiled the X500 series on 21 September in China, alongside the Vivo Watch 6 and the Vivo Buds Clip earbuds. The rollout outside China is expected in November.

The global versions are already certified: the X500 (V2619) by SIRIM in Malaysia, IMDA in Singapore and TÜV, the X500 Pro (V2621) and the X500 Pro Max (V2610) by SIRIM.

The brand’s roadmap doesn’t stop at the initial launch. Mid-cycle refreshes (Vivo X500s) are already being discussed, along with a Vivo X500 Ultra pencilled in for the first half of 2027. This ultimate model, a genuine technology showcase, is expected to drop MediaTek in favour of the rival Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. All the details are in our dedicated article: Vivo X500 Ultra, the 200 MP zoom caught in a dilemma.

Vivo X500 (standard) spec sheet

Vivo X500 or Pro versions: what’s the difference?

• Size: the X500 Pro targets compact-phone fans (6.36 inches), the standard X500 offers the middle-ground compromise (6.59 inches) and the Pro Max goes for a big display (6.85 inches).
• Design: upper-left camera block on the X500, centred camera block on the Pro versions.
• Camera and power: the Pro versions get the Dimensity 9600 Pro and the Sony sensor with LOFIC technology.

To find out more about the high-end variants, have a look at our dedicated articles on the Vivo X500 Pro and the Vivo X500 Pro Max.

In summary

Unveiled on 21 September 2026 in China from 5,499 yuan, the Vivo X500 is a very tempting alternative thanks to its flat 6.59-inch 144Hz display, its 7,500 mAh battery and a camera section now documented by the brand itself, which brings the X300 Pro’s main sensor and the X500 Pro’s periscope down to the standard model. Its international version, already certified, is expected outside China in November.

You’ll find the range in our shop as soon as it launches. In the meantime, feel free to browse our Vivo smartphones, along with our Vivo cases and Vivo tempered glass screen protectors.