Vivo’s next camera-focused flagship may already be larger than expected. A new IMEI listing has exposed a Vivo X500 Pro Max, suggesting the X500 family could stretch to four phones, with the Pro Max positioned above the regular X500, X500 Pro, and X500e.
That is a tidy bit of product laddering, and a familiar one: phone makers love to reserve the biggest screen, biggest battery, and loudest camera claims for the model with the longest name. In Vivo’s case, the timing is interesting too, because the company appears to be skipping the X400 label entirely and jumping straight to X500.
Vivo X500 Pro Max leaked specs
The leak points to a 6.9-inch AMOLED display with 2K resolution, a Dimensity 9600 chipset, and a battery of around 7000 mAh. Charging is said to reach 100 W both wired and wirelessly, which would put it in rare company among big-battery phones that usually make you choose between speed and size.
For the wider X500 line, the rumored hardware follows the same playbook. The base X500 is said to use a 6.37-inch screen, while the X500 Pro should get a 6.83-inch LTPO OLED panel with 2K resolution and a high refresh rate. Ultrasonic fingerprint scanners under the display are also expected to stay on board.
Why Vivo is stretching the X500 family
There is a practical reason for this sort of split: camera phones now compete as much on battery endurance and display quality as on optics. Vivo already has a strong reputation in imaging, and its X300 Pro currently sits second in DxOMark’s ranking of the best camera phones, so the company has every incentive to widen the lineup rather than gamble everything on one expensive model.
The catch is that more variants also raise the stakes. Bigger bodies usually mean bigger expectations, and if the Pro Max lands with the rumored hardware, it will be judged against both Xiaomi’s and Samsung’s heavy hitters, not just against Vivo’s own older phones. The brand can sell ambition; it just has to deliver the camera title that comes with it.
What happens before the Vivo X500 Ultra
For now, the Pro Max looks like the top model in the X500 series until the expected X500 Ultra shows up later, with rumors pointing to 2027 for that one. If the leaks hold up, the next question is simple: does Vivo use the Pro Max as the all-round flagship, or keep the very best camera tricks for the Ultra and make buyers wait for the real showpiece?