A phone called “mini” going toe-to-toe with Vivo’s top-tier X200 Ultra sounds like marketing exaggeration, but that’s exactly what one of Vivo’s own executives is suggesting. And with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 involved, the upcoming S50 Pro mini is suddenly a lot more interesting than your average compact phone refresh.

The confirmation came straight from Vivo’s Han Bo Xiao on Weibo, who revealed that the S50 Pro mini will run Qualcomm’s brand-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. That alone already puts it in flagship territory. The phone will also use LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage — the same combo you’ll find in the company’s X300 series and the X200 Ultra. In other words, the “mini” label is more about size than capability.

Han Bo Xiao also shared some early numbers. According to him, the S50 Pro mini scored around 3 million points on AnTuTu v10 in regular room-temperature testing. That’s a big jump over past mid-premium devices, by more than a million points in some cases. It even lands just ahead of the X200 Ultra, which scored 2.9 million in April 2025 smartphone rankings. For extra context, that score is roughly 600K higher than the X200 Pro mini running the Dimensity 9400 Plus, and more than double what the more budget-friendly X200 FE can manage.

The camera setup doesn’t sound “mini” either. Vivo is reportedly fitting the phone with a 50 MP main sensor and a 50 MP periscope telephoto — an unusual combo for a compact device. Honor is also working on a slim and compact phone, allegedly named the Magic8 Mini.

Qualcomm is expected to fully introduce the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 on November 26, starting with launches aimed at the Chinese market. Vivo now joins OnePlus, which has already teased the Ace 6T as one of the first phones to carry the new chip.

It’s just a benchmark test, and a compact phone usually packs a less effective cooling system than an “Ultra” model. So the real-world sustained performance in graphics-heavy games may or may not match the scores the company official shared. But we’ll soon find out.

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