Samsung finally unveiled its next flagship smartphones, although these are more budget-friendly versions of the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 available in stores right now. After weeks of rumors and leaks that culminated with a major leak that preceded the official announcement by just a few minutes, Samsung took the wraps off the two new “Lite” phones. What’s really surprising about them is that while they fall into two different smartphone series — one is a Galaxy S while the other is a Galaxy Note — we’re essentially looking at two different versions of the same phone.
Remember all those rumors that said Samsung might combine the Galaxy S and Note lines into a single smartphone series? Well, we’re not quite there yet, but what the specs-list below tells us is that it might happen soon enough.
There are several differences between the Galaxy S10 Lite (above) and the Note 10 Lite (below), with the former appearing to be the higher-end version of the two.
Both handsets have almost the same design, featuring a 6.7-inch Infinity-O flat display on the front with hole-punch 32-megapixel selfie camera at the top and in-display fingerprint sensor, as well as triple-lens camera systems on the back. They also share the same RAM and storage configurations (6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB of flash storage), pack the same 4,500 mAh battery, and run Android 10 with One UI on top.
When it comes to processor choices, the Galaxy S10 Lite will be the faster model, packing a 7nm chip vs. the 10nm chip in the Note 10 Lite.
The S10 Lite also seems to feature a better rear-facing camera, which packs the brand new Super Steady OIS wide-angle lens (48-megapixel). Joining it are a 5-megapixel macro lens and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens. The Note 10 Lite, meanwhile, features three 12-megapixel lenses, including ultra-wide, wide-angle, and telephoto.
It might be unclear at first why Samsung used two different camera modules for the phones. The Note 10 Lite has a square camera system, with the three sensors placed in an “L” shaped configuration. The S10 Lite has a rectangular camera module, with the three lenses stacked on top of each other. Maybe the Super Steady OIS camera needs to be labeled as seen above for marketing reasons, which would force Samsung to place that third lens under the Super Steady OIS lens rather than next to it. However, the simpler explanation is that the Note 10 Lite comes with a built-in stylus, so the internal components likely needed to be shifted in order to accommodate the S Pen slot.
Also, because of that stylus, the Note 10 Lite is a bit heavier, thicker, and slightly wider and taller than the S10 Lite. Pricing details and specific launch details haven’t been announced, but we might soon learn more details about the two phones at CES 2020 next week.
