It’s rather uncommon of Samsung to announce new phones during CES, but we are now officially being introduced to the Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite, which the company has claimed to be budget friendly variants of their flagships.

Galaxy S10 Lite

The Galaxy S10 Lite features a much larger display at 6.7-inch compared to the other S10 models, display resolution is however set at FHD+, which is still reasonable considering that it is a budget device.

The triple camera system is different from the S10, where the main wide angle camera is now a 48MP f/2.0 unit with OIS and is supported by a 5MP f/2.4 macro lens and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide lens. The front camera however has been upgraded to a 32MP f/2.2 lens for a sharper selfie.

Specs wise, the S10 Lite is powered by a Snapdragon 855 instead of an Exynos chip and gets paired to either 6/8GB of RAM with 128GB of internal storage than can be expanded up to 1TB with a microSD card, battery capacity is huge at 4500mAh and supports the faster 25W charging that came with the Galaxy Note 10.

While everything still doesn’t sound like a ‘Lite’ device at this point, the S10 Lite does omit features like IP68 dust and water resistance, wireless charging and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Galaxy Note 10 Lite

It does make perfect sense for Samsung to introduce a cheaper version of its Note 10 as opposed to the S10. Similar to the S10 Lite, the Note 10 Lite gets the same 6.7″ Super AMOLED Infinity-O display with a FHD+ resolution, which looks like a win from the standard Note 10 that has a 6.3″ display.

Being a ‘Lite’ device, the processor it uses is the Exynos 9810 from the Galaxy Note 9, the S-Pen lacks the 6-axis sensor that lets you do gesture controls, while the triple camera setup also gets a downgrade – a 12MP main sensor with OIS but no dual aperture, a 12MP f/2.4 telephoto sensor with OIS and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide sensor. The front camera is the same 32MP f/2.2 sensor as the S10 Lite.

Like the S10 Lite, the Note 10 Lite also doesn’t have water resistance and wireless charging, it also gets a 4500mAh battery and supports 25W super fast charging.

Are these devices really necessary?

Considering Chinese smartphones like the realme x2 pro is being priced that aggressively with an attractive specs sheet, it is understandable that Samsung would want to make their flagships more affordable than usual by sacrificing a couple of small features to better compete with the smaller brands.

While I get it why Samsung would want to make a cheaper Note 10 as it still make a difference with the S-Pen, the S10 Lite seems to be a weird decision as they already have the S10e to cater for the budget conscious users.

Now, all Samsung needs to do next is to surprise us how low it could go with these ‘Lite’ devices.