Pro cameras could finally become standard on regular flagships, and that's good news for your wallet

The vivo X300 Pro has earned a reputation as one of the best camera phones you can buy today, and for good reason. Its combination of a large main sensor, a capable telephoto camera, and excellent stabilization made it a serious photography tool rather than just another flagship with a long spec sheet. Now, vivo is doing something far more interesting with that camera hardware: putting much of it in this year’s regular X500.

Ahead of the X500 series launch this month, vivo’s product manager, Han Boxiao, confirmed on Weibo that the standard X500 will use the 50MP Sony LYT-828 main sensor, a 1/1.28-inch sensor found in the X300 Pro. It also gets CIPA 5.5 stabilization, giving the base model the same main-camera hardware that helped make its Pro predecessor such a formidable camera phone.

That is a pretty significant move. Last year’s X300 Pro reserved this sensor for the series’ imaging flagship. This year, you won’t need to stretch to get the Pro model for the same camera experience. vivo is essentially taking a camera component that was considered premium and making it part of the standard flagship experience.

The X500 will also feature a 64MP Sony LYTIA-610 periscope telephoto sensor, the same hardware confirmed for the vivo X500 Pro. It gets CIPA 5.5 stabilization, supports a 200mm ZEISS teleconverter, and can record 4K slow-motion video at 120fps. vivo says the X500’s main and telephoto cameras both qualify as Pro-level hardware, which explains its dual Pro ZEISS imaging pitch.

For context, the X300 Pro’s camera currently sits second in DXOMark’s smartphone camera rankings, with a score of 171. Only the HUAWEI Pura 80 Ultra ranks higher, while Google’s Pixel 11 Pro XL trails at 168. While DXOMark isn’t the final word on smartphone cameras, that gap gives some perspective on just how capable the hardware being moved into the X500 is.

Meanwhile, vivo still has room to push the envelope. The rumored X500 Pro Max is expected to sit above the Pro with a 200MP 1/1.4-inch telephoto camera, effectively taking over the role once occupied by Ultra models.

That may be the more interesting story here. As the smartphone industry appears to rethink the Ultra tier, vivo could be moving some of its former Pro-grade camera advantages down the lineup. If so, the X500 is an early and compelling example of what that future could look like: you may no longer need the most expensive phone in a flagship family to get the camera hardware worth talking about.