Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite Ownership Experience (Android 12 has arrived!)

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This is mostly from the point of view of mine who is downgrading from Pixel 2 (lol)

I hate the camera. This was expected but I was not ready for something this bad. Nishant and Vedant had alerted me about this. Note10 Lite camera specs are much better. S10 Lite just has shitty cameras. Both front and back. So if you are confused between S10 Lite and Note10 Lite… And camera is a priority… Get the Note10 Lite.

Apart from that, the phone seems fine. Samsung OneUI is very nice. Probably the best UI I have seen on a non-Google Android device.

Display is great. I had issue with display on my last two devices so this was nice. Though I usually see the flaws after a few days of usage so there’s that.

Size is huge. This phone is hard to use with a single hand. But then I have been using the tiny Pixel 2 for the last two years so this was again expected.

Samsung Pay works! I tried it twice yesterday and both times it worked just fine. I was alerted of the payment confirmation with amount which is nice because a lot of shops do not rotate the machine towards you for NFC payments.

Samsung allows for removal of most of the bundled apps. I was able to delete Facebook and a few other apps. Even Samsung’s own apps like the Internet Browser. This is surprising and nice. Not all apps are removable though.

Bixby home screen panel is painful. I keep on sliding to the left because I am used to getting the Google Discover panel there and well it gets annoying. It is mostly powered by the bundled apps which I do not use like Foursquare and Flipboard. Uber integration seems nice and useful but since I am not a regular Uber user, it probably ends up wasting battery for me.

Samsung has included the low end optical under-display FPS on this device. It is not good. I mean it works most of the times but sometimes it would just refuse to accept my thumb especially when it is lying on the desk. Thankfully Face Unlock also works great and is faster so I do not have to deal with the FPS thingy on a regular basis. Tried just now and yeap, it did not work till I picked up the phone. I guess I would have to retrain the FPS with my thumb at lower angles which I assume are not recorded properly because of the way phone was being held during the addition.

I should have asked this before. And now I realize that Samsung does not have a gesture to lock the phone. Mi devices have one. And I love it. Using button to lock the phone is just annoying.

(Can someone explain to me if Samsung Good Lock would help me with this? What exactly is this app? I just read today that it is finally ready for Android 10 devices.)

Also… I am not sure if VoLTE is working for me. I see no icon in the top bar. VoWiFi is definitely not working at the moment even though the phone is listed on Airtel’s website and it is enabled on the phone and the OS is up to date. I am in Gurgaon. A cousin also got her S10 Lite today and VoWiFi is also not working for her in Delhi so that’s not very nice.

Anyhow… If anyone has any question about this phone, feel free to ask here.

PS. Phone came with a super thin screen protector on the display. I am not sure how long it would last but it is so nicely installed that you have to look really hard to see it on the edges. It is very visible around the selfie camera. I hope it lasts for a few months at least because third party ones are going to have gaps on the edges and would probably add more issues with under-display fps.

PS. The box also came with a pretty nice transparent tpu. It feels much better than the third party case I had ordered from Amazon. Now trying to return it because I would wait for something better in future.

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Update about VoLTE and VoWiFi... It works great on Reliance Jio. Still trying to get the issue fixed with my Airtel SIM.
 
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One of the visual annoyance is that on a lot of apps, the phone has bright navigation and top bar. This makes it quite annoying to use these apps when they are in dark mode. Twitter web app is one example. Here is how it looks:

hWWJI3R.png


One way to get rid of it is to switch to gesture based navigation. Not a fan of it. Even tried using it today but had to stop because I just could not turn on One Hand Mode with gestures enabled.

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Here is a native app with dark theme.

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owners of samsung devices... feel free to post tips here on things that i must have missed. i ended up disabling most of the features like edge panel and edge lighting etc. sort of gotten used to taking screenshots with a gesture. haven't tried the screen recorder yet. any tips on samsung pay? and what samsung apps are better than google apps so i should check them out. things like that or anything else!
 
few things about the phone. fps is still a pain. phone has call recording. but could not find a way to do it manually. only option is to preconfigure. i have turned it on for all calls right now for lulz and they are pretty clear and useful.

dual volte and dual vowifi seems to be practically confirmed. as discussed in another thread... airtel might not work if your sim is not activated for volte. jio sim worked instantly.

overall, i am quite pleased with the phone.

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Automated call recording works. And quality is great. Still not possible to manually enable it on an ongoing call.
 
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jio sim does not even have a volte toggle. makes sense as disabling would basically disable calling on the sim. so there is only one toggle on my phone right now.

X1RfSKS.png
 
facebook somehow made a comeback today. cannot be uninstalled. can be disabled.

this reminds me of another thing about the phone. on mi devices... you have to opt out of recommendations and promotions. samsung seems to have a lot of similar shit but it is all opt-in. they would add a third radio box along with terms and conditions and privacy policy for recommendations. first two are mandatory of course. third one is optional. if you are not careful, you would end up opting to get marketing shit through their apps and maybe even the native platform. RADIO BOX! Not CheckBox. so nasty. but at least you do not have to read an online guide to opt out from ten different sections of the phone like on Mi devices.
 


Question for Samsung smartphone owners... What exactly the graph at the top highlight?

mtaP60V.png


Update: I realize now that this graph shows how much of the total battery capacity of the phone I am consuming on a daily basis. I guess this is a useful parameter.
 
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Notification ad!

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should mention that samsung push service does allow you to disable notifications. for now.

Huawei bundled these ads through update service so you can't disable them.
 
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this is another major annoyance on the phone. on light colored wallpaper you just do not see the notification bar. it's all hidden behind transparency.

pixel handles is so much better. they darken edges at the top which means you see everything even when you are on complete white background.
 
google fit just does not work on the phone. it would count steps after initial configuration for a few hours and that's it. after that counting is just glitchy.

samsung health does not sync with google fit. there is a third party app that costs money but seems to have good reviews. so now i have to run three apps just to ensure that my count steps are recorded on google fit.

 
Samsung's own sms app does not seem to have blocking capability for non-number texts. I guess back to SMS Organizer.
 
here some bad update related vowifi.

reliance jio vowifi does not work on airplane mode. i think this is already established on the forum.
the bigger problem on this phone is that as soon as you go into airplane mode... jio vowifi settings turns to off. automatically. and it stays there until you turn it on.

airtel's setting remains on. but i cannot confirm if airtel works on airplane mode because my volte is still not working lol.
 
I just got a call saying that their system is recognizing my phone as Samsung G7 which is not a supported phone.

SM-G770FZKSINU is the codename of S10 Lite. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? 😂
 

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