Vivo Y500 Pro debuts as new affordable phone with large battery and 'flagship-grade' specs

After rounds of teasers, Vivo has officially launched the Y500 Pro in China. It was previously touted as the "people's flagship," with the brand promising to bring "flagship-grade" specs to an affordable price point.

Starting with the design, the Vivo Y500 Pro looks very similar to the flagship X300 from the back, especially with the round camera island. Of course, the camera setup isn't the same. The new mid-range phone sports the 200 MP Samsung HP5 with OIS on the back, and this primary camera is paired with a 2 MP depth sensor.

On the front, the affordable phone features a 32 MP selfie camera. The front also has a 6.67-inch AMOLED display, which has a resolution of 1260x2800 pixels, 120 Hz refresh rate, and 800 nits brightness rating. This flat display has a 1.37 mm bezel thickness.

Another big highlight of the Vivo Y500 Pro is the large battery, featuring a rated capacity of 7,000 mAh (165 W Anker 25K power bank curr. $91.99 on Amazon). This is larger than the battery of the Vivo X300, and interestingly, it's slimmer, with the spec sheet mentioning a thickness of just 7.81 mm.

The internals of the Vivo Y500 Pro are powered by the Dimensity 7400, a newly introduced mid-range SoC. It's paired with up to 12 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 512 GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Other notable aspects include 90 W fast charging support, IP68/69 ingress rating, and an IR remote control sensor. The base configuration of the phone costs CNY 1,799, about $253, while the top-end config costs CNY 2,599, around $365.