Flashback: The Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite offered the S Pen experience for less

Samsung has the best implementation of a stylus for smartphones – not that there’s much competition – but it comes at a price. Previously, it was only available on Galaxy Note phones, which were Samsung’s most expensive handsets at the time. These days, it’s available with the Galaxy S Ultra and Z Fold models, as well as the high-end Galaxy Tab S models, neither of which are cheap (some Galaxy Book laptops also support it).

There was one exception at the start of 2020 – the Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite. It was unveiled on the same day as the S10 Lite we covered last time and it shared some similarities (beyond price), though it also had some crucial differences.

We’ll start with the display. It was a 6.7-inch panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels, the same basic dimensions as the S10 Lite display. However, this panel featured the extra digitizing layer that allowed the S Pen stylus to do its job.

Samsung even used the new Bluetooth-enabled S Pen stylus, as opposed to the purely passive styluses of older Notes. This made it possible to use the S Pen as a remote control, for example to take a photo remotely or control the music player. It wasn’t as advanced as the one used in the Note10+ and Note10 as it lacked some gestures. Still, it was miles ahead of the typical capacitive stylus you might get with some other phones.

The Bluetooth-enabled S Pen was a remote you always had on hand

The S Pen offers fast pen tracking (faster than finger detection) and can detect how hard you’re pressing (4,096 levels) so it can change the style of the virtual pen or brush you were using.

True to its name, the phone was always ready for you to take a note – just pop out the S Pen and start writing on the lock screen. Handwriting recognition can automatically turn your notes into digital text that you can easily copy and share.

Compared to the premium Note10 duo six months earlier, the Galaxy Note10 Lite was larger than the vanilla model (6.7-inch screen vs. 6.3-inch) and slightly smaller than the Plus model (which had a 6 .8 inches). Unlike both, the screen was flat, so you could draw from edge to edge.

A Galaxy Note10 Lite versus Note9 might be a more appropriate comparison. The price of the old flagship had dropped by the time the Lite hit the scene and the two cost about the same. And both featured the same Exynos 9810 chipset, although in some regions the older Note9 was available with the Snapdragon 855 instead. The Note10 Lite was an Exynos-only model.

Legacy Exynos 9810 paired with up to 8GB RAM and 128GB storage (expandable)

As you might recall from last time, the Galaxy S10 Lite was the opposite, it was a Snapdragon-only phone, which was a nice change for regions used to getting Exynos.

The S10 Lite also offers an interesting point of comparison. It and the Note10 Lite had the same screen dimensions – 6.7 inches, 1,080 x 2,400 pixels – and the same 4,500 mAh battery capacity. However, during our tests, the S-phone obtained a battery life of 110 hours against 92 hours for the Note. Okay, the display panels aren’t exactly the same, which may have helped, but the 10nm Exynos chip was certainly showing its age compared to the 7nm Snapdragon 855.

The Note also missed out on the faster 45W charging that was available on the S10 Lite as well as the Note10+. It had a larger battery than other Notes, for example, the larger Plus had 4,300mAh in its tank. Still, with a newer Exynos 9825 it lasted 107h in our endurance test (the 9825 was a 7nm part, scaled down from the 8nm 9820 that was used in some Galaxy S10 models).

The Galaxy Note10 Lite featured a 12MP triple camera on the back, including a 52mm 2x telephoto lens, which the S10 Lite lacked. It even used the same 1/2.55″ sized sensor (1.4µm pixels) as the high-end Note10 models, with Dual Pixel AF and OIS, but without the dual aperture feature. The older chipset n However, it wasn’t as good in terms of video capture.

A few other things worth mentioning are the microSD slot and 3.5mm headphone jack – the Note10 Lite had them, although the premium Note10 duo became the first in the family to lose them.

There were a few things that made the Note10 Lite, well, a Lite model. This includes a plastic back panel (the front was Gorilla Glass 3 and the chassis was metal), no IP rating for dust or water resistance, no USB 3 port, and no built-in stereo speakers.

The S Pen survived the Galaxy Note series, though the S Ultra model is so different from the vanilla-plus phones that it might as well be called the Note. The stylus is also featured on Samsung’s high-end tablets (and some of its laptops as well) and has been adapted to work on foldable screens as well.

The Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite was available in fun colors

The only segment it’s not in – at least not since the Galaxy Note10 Lite – is more affordable phones. More affordable than the flagships, anyway, the Note10 Lite wasn’t that cheap. It depends, in fact, in Europe it was only 50€ less than the small Note10, in India it was half the price of the Note10.

Are there any stylus fans around here? Would you like to see, say, a Galaxy A phone with an S Pen?