[davidmanze]

So am I. Now, I require hard evidence before starting to believe it could match the D500 - but clearly, they've put some effort. 101 AF points from 27-33 (not happy with only 25 cross-type, but let's see the layout), metering sensor of 307k RGBIr pixels from 86k RGB... this is not your grandfather's SAFOX.

 I wouldn't worry too much about about AF cross-points ...... when you see Nikon's technical solutions info  ...... you see that actually many of the higher priced telephoto lens can only use some of them ......
linked here:

https://nps.nikonimaging.com/technical_solutions/d5_tips/af/focus_points/

 ....... the AF-S 600mm F4E FL can only use 63 cross points out of 153 ... tele-converters drop that down to 45 CPs...... with the gaps in between being line points ......
....... btw. ..... when you mount the Tamron 150-600mm G2 on the D500 it won't focus in the extreme corners at 600mm .... so who knows how many CPs are even being used at 600mm @ F6.3 ?? (max aperture @ 600mm)  .... yet no problems !!

  Pentax had a problem with AF as much that in AF-C, the subject distance before the camera would react to a focus change, was twice that of AF-S ........ (I did careful tests K3/K5) ...... probably because the processor was not capable of processing smaller incremental adjustments fast enough and had to be restrained ....... I call it dead-band ....
With two processors and its new AF array, hopefully the dead-band will be equally small in both AF-S and AF-C .....