Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite review: This phone exists, and it’s pretty good
The Galaxy S10 Lite comes at a time when Samsung is getting ready to unveil the Galaxy S11, or the Galaxy S20 as the company has decided to call it. The Galaxy S10 Lite’s spec sheet combines a lot of tech from various mid-range and flagship Galaxy phones from last year. You have the Galaxy S10’s Snapdragon 855 processor, the Galaxy A70’s 4,500 mAh battery with 25W super fast charging, and a rear camera setup that’s pretty similar to what you find on the Galaxy A51.The only unique thing about the S10 Lite is what Samsung calls Super Steady OIS for the camera, which improves stability by allowing the camera sensor to move in all directions to offset hand movements. As such, the Galaxy S10 Lite doesn’t really fit in any category. One can say it’s a mid-range phone with flagship elements, a combination we have previously seen with the Galaxy A90 5G.The Galaxy S10 Lite is much more widely available than the A90 5G, but does it offer the right amount of features for the asking price for us to give it a recommendation? Let’s find out in this review.Galaxy S10 Lite design
The Galaxy S10 Lite may be named after the Galaxy S10 series, but it looks nothing like any of the other Galaxy S10 smartphones. At the back, the triple camera setup is placed in the top-left corner in a protruding rectangular window, which looks quite similar to the camera setup on the Galaxy M30s, which falls in the budget segment as far as pricing is concerned. But oh boy, it sure does look striking.The Galaxy S10 Lite has no gradient effect. After a year of seeing rear panels with insane gradients and rainbow-like patterns on Galaxy phones, the dark blue shade on our review unit looks much classier in comparison. It also feels quite premium to hold, despite having plastic on the back and sides. It’s not too heavy, and it’s not very big despite having a 6.7-inch display, all thanks to the slimmer bezels at the front.
The phone’s pretty thin as well, but that probably isn’t the reason why Samsung didn’t equip it with a headphone jack. It’s a surprising omission considering the Galaxy Note 10 Lite has it even though the two phones have the same battery capacity, and it may be Samsung’s way of preparing us for a future that doesn’t include a headphone jack on non-flagship phones and also the flagship Galaxy S lineup.You may also be wondering if the Galaxy S10 Lite has any sort of water or dust protection. It doesn’t, and frankly, it’s easy to see why. Adding any sort of ingress protection would have raised the price of the device by a sizable amount, and it would also leave much less distinction between the S10 Lite and the flagship Galaxy S10 smartphones.The S10 Lite’s box comes with the standard package: A charger, USB-C cable, SIM ejector pin, USB-C earphones, a user manual, and in markets like India, a plastic case. The phone has a screen protector pre-installed, which is the case for every smartphone Samsung launches these days.Galaxy S10 Lite display
Samsung isn’t advertising it too much, but the S10 Lite’s 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display seems to be just as good as the one on the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10. The colors and viewing angles are all spot on, and the S10 Lite display is also HDR+ certified. So, yeah, the display is flagship-grade, just like the S10 Lite’s processor. I compared the same HDR video on YouTube on the S10 Lite and the S10+ and found no discernible difference, except for slightly higher definition in very bright objects, such as clouds, on the latter.The brightness levels of the Galaxy S10 Lite are also as high as the Note 10+ display, though the former does seem to have a warmer color tone by default. You can change that to your liking from the display setting, though. And, as some folks prefer, the Galaxy S10 Lite display isn’t curved, so you can slap on any kind of screen protector on top. You still get the Edge screen functionality, so the flat screen is purely a cosmetic difference compared to Samsung’s flagship phones.
I am also glad to report that Samsung has substantially improved the quality of the optical in-display fingerprint sensor. I didn’t completely believe my colleague Adnan when he said the Galaxy A51’s optical in-display sensor works well, but it’s good to see I was wrong. In fact, I’ve had a higher success rate with the fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S10 Lite than I’ve had with the technically superior ultrasonic in-display sensors on the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10.That may be partly because the optical sensors are not affected by things such as skin dryness. My fingers are usually visibly dry, which can be an issue with the ultrasonic sensors. The S10 Lite’s fingerprint sensor is excellent, in short. It’s quick and has pretty good accuracy, and it is miles better than the frankly horrible optical fingerprint sensors we saw on mid-range Galaxy phones in 2019. Facial recognition also works great.Galaxy S10 Lite camera
The Galaxy S10 Lite has a 48MP F2.0 main shooter at the back, flanked by a 12MP F2.2 123-degree ultra-wide camera and a 5MP F2.4 macro camera. The main shooter has what Samsung calls Super Steady OIS technology. Basically, the main camera lens can move around like a gimbal to stabilize your videos. The lens can move upwards, downwards, and to the left and right to offset device movements caused by the user, and while it sounds very fancy, it’s more or less like the optical image stabilization you get on flagship smartphone cameras.And since Samsung hasn’t equipped one of its non-flagship phones with hardware-based optical image stabilization, the S10 Lite’s OIS tech is a big deal, fancy or not. Samsung says the Super Steady OIS tech (not to be confused with the software-based super steady video recording) lets you “add gimbal-like stability and UHD quality to your live videos and photos in low-light conditions.” How does it work in practice, though?Well, with videos, I didn’t really see any difference between videos captured with the Galaxy S10 Lite and a Galaxy S10+. Both capture smooth video unless there’s too much movement of the device, especially at the 60fps Full HD resolution (the S10 Lite has 4K recording, but not [email protected]). Again, just the presence of optical image stabilization on the phone means there’s none of the shake that you find in videos shot on Samsung’s mid-range and budget phones. And that’s great.
