Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite: Great Cost and Performance

To Love

  • Attractive Price
  • Solid design despite being ‘Glastic’
  • Good cameras 
  • 2 days of battery life with 45W fast-charging

What didn’t work for me 

  • Snapdragon 855 processor is a little dated
  • Low-light photos could be better

Price : RM 2699

|ZTG Rating|
3.5/5

Verdict

The Galaxy S10 Lite has more rights than wrongs. It’s essential features and easy usability puts it in a good place in terms of being in an extremely saturated value-flagship segment. The build quality and camera sensors are its strong points, with the added benefit of a long battery life with 45W of charging support. If it had a Snapdragon 855+ instead of it’s predecessor, it would’ve been perfect. Watch the video above for the full review , photo and video samples!

Hardware

Keeping things running is a Snapdragon 855 processor, 8 gigs of RAM and 128GB of internal storage space. You can further expand with a microSD card. Unlike its predecessors, the S10 Lite packs a 6.7-inch display with a Full HD+ AMOLED+ panel. It supports HDR10+ and has a 20:9 aspect ratio. Although the aspect ratio is good ergonomically, it’s still a big, unwieldy device, and it proved a challenge to use with just one hand. There’s a snappy under-display optical fingerprint sensor that I really liked, but again due to its sheer size it was a bit of a chore to unlock with just one hand.

The display managed to be consistent when using under the direct Malaysian sunlight. 

Camera Setup: 

  • 48 MP, f/2.0, 26mm (wide), 

  • 12 MP, f/2.2, 12mm (ultrawide)

  • 5 MP, f/2.4, 25mm (macro), 

The S10 Lite’s cameras setup is a little unusual, but managed to fare better in some aspects compared to the S10 series. The primary is a 48MP shooter with a maximum aperture of f/2.0. This is paired with a 12MP, f/2.2 ultra-wide shooter and a dedicated 5MP macro camera. I enjoyed the macro sensor, it was able to capture very fine detail (with obviously minimal distance), despite being tested in a variety of lighting conditions. I’d recommend this over the OnePlus 7T Pro’s macro camera any day. Go on and capture all the grains of rice and flowers you can find!

Photos captured were a little over decent, and might be a little noisy due to HDR-mode kicking in automatically. Typical trade-off, fighting to get more exposure and shadow balance, in exchange for a little more noise. At night however, things got noisier and smudged for my liking, and very little can be done to make it even just a little better. Overall, the cameras are a highlight of the S10 Lite, and it’s proven to be reliable and consistent. (Be sure to update your system version, as camera improvements were made). 

 

Conclusion? It’s a good, value for money phone. 

The S10 Lite has a lot to offer, despite the corners Samsung had to cut to bring down the price. You’ll get a near-flagship level experience, with a good balance of performance and battery life. Does it game well? Yes. Does it last a long time on a single charge? Oh yes. For the RM 2699 asking price, it’s hard not to consider the Galaxy S10 Lite. The One UI 2 flagship experience is something to behold over the mid-range equivalents, so it’s definitely more than okay to go for this. 

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