Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite review

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Introduction

When Samsung launched its Galaxy S10-lineup last year, the Galaxy S10e immediately positioned itself as the budget alternative to the expensive vanilla S10 and S10+. But it also filled an overlooked niche - compact flagships. Now with the release of the Galaxy S10 Lite, things start to get a bit confusing. Because we all thought the S10e was the light model. And if you look at the S10 Lite's specs sheet closely, you'd notice that there's nothing Lite about that phone.the

In fact, we expect the S10 Lite to perform better than its full-fledged S10 siblings in some scenarios. Battery life and charging are two of them as the S10 Lite comes with a generous 4,500 mAh unit and supports up to 45W fast charging over the USB Power Delivery standard. Those are some features that are missing from the Galaxy S10-lineup's specs sheet.

The S10 Lite also comes with a 6.7-inch screen which makes it the largest S10 devices in the roster (the S10+ is 'only' 6.4 inches).

And we've all heard and seen the stories about the Snapdragon 855's ISP being better than Samsung's one on the Exynos so it's going to be interesting to see how it performs against the S10, for example. Also, the S10 Lite adopts the popular 48MP sensor with pixel-binning that everyone uses and this is the first time we see this sensor coupled with a high-end hardware.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite specs

• Body: Glass front, plastic back, metal side frame
• Screen: 6.7-inch, 20:9, FHD+ (1080 x 2400px), Super AMOLED Plus
• Rear camera: Primary 48MP, 1/2" sensor size, 0.8µm pixels, f/2.0 aperture; Ultra wide-angle: 12MP, f/2.2 aperture, 12mm; Macro: 5MP, 1/5.0" f/2.4; LED flash; 2160p@60fps video recording
• Front camera: 32MP, f/2.2 aperture
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 855: Octa-core (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 485 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 485 & 4x1.78 GHz Kryo 485), Adreno 640 GPU
• Memory: 6/128GB or 8/128GB UFS 2.1; microSD card support;
• OS: Android 10; Samsung One UI 2.0 on top
• Battery: 4,500mAh, 25W/45W USB PD 3.0 charging
• Connectivity: Dual SIM (4G), Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, USB-C; 3.5mm audio jack
• Misc: Under-display optic fingerprint reader, NFC, no 3.5mm audio jack.

Despite its differences, we can see how the S10 Lite fits in the family by providing a bigger screen than the S10+ while offering most of the features the other S10s have. And we don't think the S10 Lite will cannibalize the sales of the rest of its family. Currently, the phone sells for around €650 - just as much you'd pay for the S10+ - while offering features that are more in line with 2020. Of course, there are some trade-offs that need to be considered.

There's one moderately big setback with the current camera setup, though - there's no telephoto. We have a capable ultra-wide snapper and a promising 5MP dedicated macro camera in addition to the main 48MP and that's a pretty big oversight in our books. One would argue that a proper 2x telephoto camera would be more beneficial than the macro. After all, we've seen pretty decent telephoto units on much cheaper devices so we can't think of a reason why would the S10 Lite settle for less.

Now let's get familiar with Samsung's newest mainstream flagship phone.

Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite

The handset comes with the usual user manuals and a USB-C to USB-C cable for charging and data transfer. That's because it has to support the USB Power Delivery 3.0 charging standard with the included 25W brick in the box. Keep in mind, though, that if you don't have a PC with USB-C connector or a USB-C to USB-A cable, you can't connect the phone to your computer unless you get an extra cable.

Aside from that, you also get a pair of AKG-tuned wired USB-C earphones included in the retail box.