Honor is getting ready to pull the wraps off its new Honor 500 series in China on November 24, and the star of the show is already clear: the Honor 500 Pro and its next-gen 3D ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor. 
While the company has already shown the design of both the vanilla 500 and the 500 Pro, it is this tiny piece of biometric hardware that is stealing the spotlight.
Unlike the more common optical scanners that simply shine light through the display to read a fingerprint, 3D ultrasonic sensors send sound waves to build a precise 3D map of your fingertip. In practice that means better security, fewer failed unlock attempts and far more reliable performance in tricky situations. Honor says the new sensor in the 500 Pro can unlock the phone in around 0.1 seconds and keeps working even if your fingers are wet or the display is covered in droplets, something optical readers still often struggle with. The phone’s IP69K rating suggests the whole device is built with water resistance very much in mind.
Hard specs are still under wraps, but leaks paint a picture of a seriously beefy upper-midrange flagship. The Honor 500 Pro is expected to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, paired with an enormous 8,000 mAh battery that should easily deliver multi-day endurance, and a 50 MP telephoto camera offering 3x optical zoom on top of the main sensor. If Honor’s image processing keeps improving the way we’ve seen on recent models, the Pro could turn into a surprisingly capable camera phone for travel and low-light shots.
The standard Honor 500 should come in a little cheaper and slightly less extreme. Rumors point to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 under the hood, which still promises plenty of performance for gaming and multitasking but gives Honor some room to position the Pro as the true spec monster of the line-up.
Officially, the launch on November 24 is limited to China, which left a lot of international fans complaining that the most interesting Honor hardware never leaves the company’s home market. However, an early listing spotted on Amazon Germany suggests the 500 Pro might not stay a China-exclusive for long. The phone has appeared there under a private listing at 749 € with a 50 € early-bird discount, rising to 799 € after December 6. That pricing points straight at the upper-midrange Android crowd in Europe and sets the Honor 500 Pro up as a direct rival to devices like the Galaxy S FE line and Xiaomi’s latest number series.
If those leaks and listings hold up, the Honor 500 Pro could end up being one of the more interesting value-flagships of the season: a huge battery, fast and secure biometric tech, serious zoom hardware and at least a hint that Honor is willing to bring the good stuff beyond China this time.