vivo X500 Pro Max Keeps Last Spring’s Camera Island

vivo showed the X500 Pro Max on September 9 with the same circular Zeiss camera island as the X300 Ultra, plus a 400mm converter still clamped on. Product Vice President Huang Tao posted the rear in silver and orange on Weibo. China gets the X500, X500 Pro, and X500 Pro Max on September 21.

On September 10 the company followed with official images of all three phones. The Pro Max still reads as a camera first, a slab second, and that is the point of leaving the island alone.

The Circular Island Comes Back in Orange

Huang Tao’s Weibo stills put a dual-tone glass back under a large round metal deck. Three sensors sit inside the ring with Zeiss lettering in the middle, and the LED flash sits outside the island on the top left of the rear. A vertical vivo mark sits at the bottom left.

The Pro and Pro Max share that centered circular face. Official images on September 10 put both in grey, white, orange, and black. The Pro Max is the larger of the two and adds an extra button on the left edge. Huang Tao’s earlier teaser had already shown silver and orange, so the orange rear is not a leak, it is a color vivo wants people to see.

The base X500 does not get that biscuit. It uses a smaller round camera on the left, set in a rectangular deck, with a sensor and flash to the right, a layout closer to the old X90 than to last spring’s Ultra. Its colors are white, grey, dawn pink, and black. If you buy the cheap one, you are not buying the mount the converter needs.

A metal flat mid-frame carries the power and volume keys on the right. The teaser that started this also showed a silver extender kit on the phone, with a capture button and a zoom toggle, Zeiss marks on both the barrel and the grip. vivo is not hiding the accessory. It is selling the back as a dock.

Last Spring’s 400mm Lens Still Fits

When the X300 Ultra shipped in China at the end of March, vivo priced a new pair of clip-on lenses and said the longer one would stay exclusive. The G2 Ultra 400mm unit was CNY 1,999 ($290) and listed only for that Ultra. The shorter G2 200mm unit was CNY 999 and worked on the X300 Ultra, X300s, X300 Pro, X300, and the older X200 Ultra. vivo said it was working on G2 Ultra support for the X300 Pro and X200 Ultra. It did not have to work on support for a phone whose camera ring is the same shape.

Notebookcheck’s look at the new teaser setup is blunt: the 400mm barrel on the X500 Pro Max looks like the same G2 Ultra from the X300 Ultra, and a sample sunset frame still watermarks f/2.67, the aperture already used on the X300 Pro and X300 Ultra telephotos. The native 85mm lens becomes 400mm with the converter on, about 16.6x versus a 24mm wide shot. That is why the island could not move. A new ring would orphan a lens vivo is still selling.

THE G2 ULTRA PRICE TAG

• G2 Ultra 400mm: CNY 1,999 in China, exclusive to the X300 Ultra when it launched, now shown on the X500 Pro Max.
• G2 200mm: CNY 999, already shared across the X300 family and the X200 Ultra.
• Older 2.35x unit: The X200 Ultra converter still fits the later X300 phones, which is the same mount logic vivo is extending.
• European kit: vivo’s store lists a full X300 Ultra photography kit at 599 euro, with the 400 mm equivalent Zeiss telephoto extender, a case, grip, strap, lens adapter, and tripod collar in the box.

Judging the new phone by a concert crop from that barrel is a poor test, because most buyers will never screw the glass on. The native 85mm is how the camera will be used on a Tuesday. The converter is how vivo keeps last year’s kit buyers inside the family, and how it keeps a 400mm still in the press shots.

What the Pro Max Camera Stack Changes

The back is old on purpose. The sensors are not all carry-over. Han Boxiao, a vivo product manager, used Weibo in late August to split the Pro and Pro Max teles, and the split is the cleanest hardware news in the teaser week.

PRO MAX CAMERA HARDWARE

• Telephoto: A 200MP Zeiss APO periscope on the same 1/1.4-inch Samsung HP0 sensor as the X300 Ultra, with hardware 4x in-sensor zoom, CIPA 7.0 stabilisation, and a Super Capture path vivo rates to 30x.
• Main camera: A new 50MP, 1/1.28-inch Sony LYT-910 with LOFIC, which vivo’s Blueprint team says can reach 17EV of dynamic range.
• Ultrawide: A 50MP wide, completing a triple with laser AF, a color spectrum sensor, and Zeiss T* coating on the stack.
• Stabilisation: CIPA 7.0 on the main and periscope, with a 3-degree gimbal-style travel vivo has been quoting for the Pro Max.

The X500 Pro does not get the HP0. It gets a 64MP Zeiss APO telephoto at 85mm on a Sony LYT-610, with a GG 1×1 and RB 2×2 pixel layout Han Boxiao says is there to help focusing, plus the same CIPA 7.0 claim and 4K 120fps slow motion. That is a different phone that happens to wear the same round deck, so the smaller Pro can still look like the Max in a pocket shot without carrying the 200MP module.

A 4K60 clip already sat on Weibo beside Huang Tao’s stills. Han Boxiao had earlier pointed at 4K 240fps slow motion on the Pro series. Those are processing jobs, and they are why the chip tease matters more than a new camera ring would have.

MediaTek Unveils the Chip on September 15

Han Boxiao wrote that the X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max will use a MediaTek Dimensity chip built on TSMC’s second-generation 2nm N2P process, with a new GPU block and a high-end NPU. A Geekbench listing for a V2602DA unit, treated as the Pro Max, names the silicon as MediaTek MT6995 and shows a 4.55GHz peak. The product name in every teaser is the Dimensity 9600 Pro.

MediaTek put its own stage on September 15 at 2:30 p.m. in China, six days before vivo’s event. The company has not posted a 9600 product page yet. It has been selling all-big-core Dimensity flagship chips for years, and the 9600 Pro teasers lean on 4K 240fps slow motion, “pro imaging,” and a new HyperEngine gaming stack. vivo’s version of that pitch is a dedicated imaging block for 4K 120fps 10-bit Log, 60fps video autofocus tracking, and hardware video super-resolution.

The base X500 is tipped to stay on a 3nm Dimensity 9500-class chip, which would match the cheaper camera deck. That split is the same idea as the converter: spend the 2nm wafer on the two phones that can use the Log hardware and the round mount.

Three Phones Split Into Two Camera Faces

vivo skipped an X400 generation and is opening this one with three China models on the same night, plus the Watch 6 and Buds Clip ear-clip headphones. The Pro Max is the only body confirmed with the 400mm kit in the design stills. The rest of the sheet is still a teaser sheet, and battery and charging have not been locked in public.

THE THREE X500 BODIES

The 6.85-inch 2K LTPO panel with a 144Hz refresh is the figure vivo’s teasers keep attaching to the Pro Max, along with a first-use BOE Q11 glass. The Pro shrinks the screen to 6.37 inches. If those sizes hold on September 21, the Max is the imaging brick and the Pro is the compact that still photographs like an X phone.

India has been discussed for October and other markets for November. Those dates are not on the Weibo launch card. The card that is on Weibo is September 21 at 19:00 in China.

Huang Tao Wants the Video Crown Too

At the Creator Festival in Yantai on September 7, vivo set the date and started talking about video as hard as it talks about stills. Huang Tao put the line on Weibo when he showed the orange and silver backs.

This generation’s goal is to be the first choice for photography, the only choice for video.

Huang Tao, Product Vice President, Weibo

He tied that line to portraits, long zoom, and a move from stills into motion, with a claim that good images should not need a separate camera and a grade in post. The hardware vivo has already listed for that job is 4K 120fps 10-bit Log, 4K 240fps slow motion on the Pro series, and a main sensor it says can hold 17EV. ACES color and 8K live output were part of the same festival briefing. None of that needs a new camera island. It needs the 2nm chip MediaTek will describe on September 15, and it needs the 85mm module the 400mm barrel still screws onto.

The X500 Pro Max that goes on stage on September 21 will look, from three feet away, like the Ultra from March with a new paint job. The converter in the teaser is the reason. The new main sensor and the N2P chip are the parts that actually change, and those are the parts you cannot see in Huang Tao’s still.