November's China midrange wave is four launches pretending to be one race, and only one of them is built to win two lanes at the same time: a 9,000mAh-class battery and a real periscope telephoto. Everything else in this month's cluster owns a single job. Compare them on a spec sheet and you will pick the wrong phone.

So pick the job first.

Phone Status Chip (leaked) Battery (leaked) The lane it owns
OPPO Reno 17 / 17 Pro 9 November, confirmed Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 / Dimensity 8550 Super 8,000 / 7,200mAh Price and size
Honor 700 / 700 Pro Series announced, date pending Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 / Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 ~9,000mAh Endurance, plus zoom
vivo S70 November, date unannounced Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 not disclosed Genuine optical zoom
Huawei Nova 17 Pro Expected end of month new Kirin "8-series", branding TBD 7,000mAh+ The Huawei ecosystem

Almost every number in that table is a leak, and the leaks do not agree with each other. OPPO's chip for the Reno 17 Pro has been reported as the Dimensity 8550, the Dimensity 8550 Super and the Dimensity 8500 Super, and the Pro's cell has been called both 7,000mAh and 7,200mAh. Chinese outlets that have read the same Digital Chat Station posts say 8550 Super, so that is the best guess. Treat every spec below as a tip until the store page says otherwise.

What is actually confirmed

Very little, and that matters. OPPO has put the Reno 17 series on the calendar for 9 November in China, alongside the Pad Air 6 and Watch 5, with 宋雨琦 as the face of it and a teaser built around "全焦段 4K 超清长实况", which is a live-photo feature rather than a camera spec. Reservations are already open.

Honor announced the 700 series on 3 November and has named a brand ambassador, 鞠婧祎, which is the part Chinese outlets keep repeating. All three models, the 700 Vitality Edition, the 700 and the 700 Pro, cleared 3C certification and then network certification in the same week. Their model numbers are FAA-AN00, FAP-AN00 and FAS-AN00, and each ships with an 80W adapter rated at 20V/4A. The design was shown off on 5 and 6 November: a horizontal camera matrix and a rectangular rear screen built into the camera island.

vivo has said nothing about a date for the S70. Huawei has said nothing at all about the Nova 17 series beyond a possible launch late in November.

Honor 700 Pro: the two-lane phone

This is the one to track if your phone's job is to survive two days without a charger and still take a photo of something across a street.

The 700 Pro is the only device in the group reported to carry a genuine flagship silicon (Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, with the standard 700 on the 8s Gen 4), a 9,000mAh-class battery, a 200MP main sensor and a 50MP periscope telephoto. Digital Chat Station's 5 November chip leak called it "双 8 芯片" technology, two phones on 8-series platforms, and the Pro on the faster one.

The battery is the part that is genuinely new. The Chinese Honor 600 Super ships with 8,600mAh, so 9,000mAh is a real step up rather than a rounding error. The Pro is also tipped for 50W wireless charging plus reverse wireless, on top of the 80W wired that the 3C filings confirm.

The rear screen is the other headline, and it is not the same trick as before. The Honor 600 series used a snap-on magnetic mini display; the 700 series has a 1.72-inch native panel built into the camera module, according to DCS, which says it handles time, weather, notifications and music controls. That is a gimmick with a battery cost, so if you are endurance-obsessed, consider whether the back screen is worth the milliamp-hours.

Both the 700 and the 700 Pro are reported to support a 200mm telephoto extender, which is a bolt-on accessory and not a bundled lens. Expect to pay for it separately.

vivo S70: the zoom specialist

If your phone's job is photos, the S70 is the cleanest bet of the four, because it has the only camera in this group with a real jump in it.

The S70 is reported to carry a 64MP Sony LYT-610 periscope, up from the 50MP periscope with 3x optical zoom in the S60. Resolution on a periscope is not decoration: it is what you have left after cropping, which is the whole reason a periscope exists. The rest of the rear array is a 50MP main on a large sensor, an 8MP ultrawide and a 50MP selfie, on a 6.59-inch 1.5K flat LTPS OLED.

Its real hook is that the S-series has never supported a telephoto extender before. Vivo has offered the 200mm unit on the X line, and the X300 FE was the first FE model to take the 200mm Telephoto Extender Gen 2. If the S70 supports the same, it becomes the cheapest way into a 200mm lens on a China phone. Cost and which generation it takes are both unannounced.

Chip is Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, a step up from the 8s Gen 3 in the S60. Battery size is the open question, and for a phone whose pitch is a lens, that is a strange thing to leave unsaid.

OPPO Reno 17: the price and size lane

The Reno 17 is the one to buy if you want the cheapest credible new phone in this cluster, and it is the only launch here with a date you can write in a diary.

DCS's 3 November leak gives the standard Reno 17 a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, a 6.5-inch screen and an 8,000mAh-class cell, while the Pro gets a 6.3-inch panel, a smaller 7,200mAh-class battery and a 200MP main sensor alongside the 50MP periscope that both models share. Memory is listed as 8GB/256GB, 12GB/256GB and 12GB/512GB across five colours. Chinese reports on 2 November are where the 200MP pairing and the 8550 Super naming come from.

Two details deserve attention. First, the Pro's screen is smaller than the standard model's, and its battery is smaller too. The Pro is not the endurance pick. Second, the Reno 16 series topped out at 7,000mAh, so the Pro's cell is roughly flat while the standard model gains a full 1,000mAh. OPPO is clearly putting the battery in the cheaper phone.

Huawei Nova 17 Pro: the one you cannot benchmark

The Nova 17 Pro is the hardest of the four to argue about, because the chip is the point and the chip is unannounced.

DCS's 5 November post gives a 6.84-inch 1.5K OLED with a 6.68-inch 1.5K panel for the standard Nova 17, a 200MP main suspected to be GalaxyCore's GCB0H (with a GCB0H5 variant in the 1/1.56-inch class), a 50MP 1/2.5-inch SmartSens SC5000CS telephoto and a multispectral lens for colour accuracy. On silicon, DCS names only a "new 8-series" platform with Kirin branding still to be decided; Kirin 8050 has been floated but nobody has confirmed it.

The gotcha in the 200MP main is sensor size. A GalaxyCore part in the 1/1.56-inch class is small next to the large sensors flagship phones use, so that 200MP is about resolution and pixel-level detail rather than light gathering in low light. If night photography is your priority, the number on the spec sheet is not telling you what you need.

Chinese reporting also has the Nova 17 series starting at 7,000mAh, with a possible SE variant above 8,000mAh, and the Nova 17Z possibly cancelled.

The verdict

Endurance and zoom together: wait for the Honor 700 Pro. It is the only phone here reported to carry a flagship chip, a 9,000mAh-class cell and a periscope at the same time, and it is the only one with 3C and network certification already in hand.

Zoom only, and you like carrying accessories: vivo S70. The 64MP LYT-610 periscope plus 200mm extender is the strongest imaging proposition in the wave, and the extender support would be a first for the S series.

Cheapest credible upgrade, and you want a known date: OPPO Reno 17 on 9 November. Just read the 8,000mAh figure as the selling point and ignore the Pro if you care about battery life.

Already inside HarmonyOS and not leaving: Nova 17 Pro, but wait for the Kirin part number and a price before spending. A camera you cannot test and a chip nobody has named is not a purchase decision yet.

One caution for anyone outside China: all four are China-first launches, and the global SKUs get different chips, different camera sensors and different battery capacities. Importing a China Reno 17 or Honor 700 for the camera is a worse deal than the headline suggests.

Sources