Flashback: the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite punched above its weight

By early 2020 the Galaxy S10 sequence was getting ready to retire. A 12 months earlier it had launched the world’s first 5G cellphone and introduced the surprisingly in style S10e mannequin together with the common S10 vanilla and plus telephones. But there was simply sufficient time for one final hurrah earlier than the S20 sequence launched in February.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite was introduced in early February 2020 and went on sale a month later, simply days earlier than the official introduction of the S20 fashions. In some methods it was a prototype for the Galaxy S20 FE – it used older however nonetheless premium {hardware} and it value lower than the primary sequence fashions.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite

The Lite stood a head above most different S10 members and we imply that actually – with a 6.7” show (with a tall 20:9 facet ratio as well), it stood at 162.5mm tall, 75.6mm huge and eight.1mm thick, it weighed 186g. Only the Galaxy S10 5G, the aforementioned first ever 5G cellphone, was barely bigger.

That sizable show had “only” FHD+ decision, 1,080 x 2,400px, which at the time appeared unpleasant for what was labeled as a flagship. Little did we all know what would are available 2021. Anyway, it had HDR10+ assist and an Always-On Display mode.

Besides the decision, the solely clue that this wasn’t a real flagship was the older Gorilla Glass 3+ safety (the others had moved on to GG6). Well, the lack of an IP score stood out as properly. The cellphone had an aluminum body like its siblings, although it did save a couple of dollars by utilizing a plastic again.

While issues have modified in the intervening years, again in 2019 and 2020 solely a choose few markets received Snapdragon chipsets – Samsung was utilizing Exynos all over the place else. The Galaxy S10 Lite launched completely with the Snapdragon 855, nonetheless.

It was a 12 months previous at that time, however this was a really succesful chipset that did see some use in 2020, together with on Samsung’s first Galaxy Z Flip. It didn’t have the endurance that the Snapdragon 865/870 did, nonetheless.

On the S10 Lite the chipset was hooked as much as 6 or 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (or 512GB in some configurations, no 256GB possibility, although). The inside UFS 2.1 storage could possibly be expanded with microSD playing cards that took the place of SIM2. The cellphone launched with Android 10 with One UI 2 and obtained Android 13 with One UI 5 just a few months in the past.

Since this was a “lite” mannequin, Samsung seemingly minimize corners by skipping the 12MP 2x telephoto digital camera that was featured on the different S10 fashions. However, the Lite could have had one thing higher – a 48MP sensor that supported lossless 2x zoom.

We say “better” because it was bigger, a 1/2.0” sensor with 0.8µm pixels (1.6µm with binning), in comparison with the 12MP 1/2.55” 1.4µm sensor that was used on the different S10 telephones. It even had OIS, although that didn’t work significantly properly once we examined it. Also, a few of the fancier tech was ignored, no Dual Pixel AF and no twin aperture. The cellphone may file 4K video at solely 30fps, whereas its siblings did 4K at 60fps.

The Lite was additionally outfitted with a 12MP ultrawide digital camera (quite than 16MP) and likewise featured a 5MP macro digital camera to carry the depend as much as three. Like the primary digital camera, the selfie cam had a bigger, larger decision sensor than the primary S10 telephones – a 32MP 1/2.8” (0.8µm) for the Lite, 10MP 1/3” (1.22µm) for the others.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite additionally has a number of firsts to its identify. It is the first Samsung cellphone with 45W quick charging. Sure, the Galaxy S20 Ultra matched it a month later, however the Lite was first. And the Galaxy S10 and S10+ solely did 15W charging, even the bigger S10 5G topped out at 25W (as did the S20 and S20+).

They had wi-fi charging, although, which the Lite lacked. Still, with its giant 4,500mAh battery the cellphone scored a powerful 110h endurance score.

The different first is much less optimistic – the Lite was the first ever Galaxy S cellphone to not have a 3.5mm headphone jack. None of them do as of late, the S20 fashions didn’t, neither did any that got here after, however the S10 Lite was first.

The Galaxy S10 Lite was positioned as a kind of flagship killer. However, the options and pricing had been fastidiously designed in order that it didn’t goal Samsung’s personal flagships however quite it went after different premium telephones from extra reasonably priced manufacturers as a substitute.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite launched at €650 in early February of 2020. For comparability, the vanilla S10 was $900/€900 a 12 months earlier and even the petite S10e was $750/€750. One 12 months is a very long time in tech and the premium S10 telephones had undergone value cuts by the time the S10 Lite arrived. For instance, a $150 minimize introduced the S10 all the way down to $750 in the US and the S10e to $600, this was a few months earlier than the S10 Lite launched in the similar marketplace for $650.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite launched hand in hand with the Galaxy Note10 Lite

Of course, this wasn’t the solely Lite to launch in early 2020, Samsung additionally introduced out the Galaxy Note10 Lite. But we’ll save that for one more time.