A day after Apple announced the new iPhone SE, Samsung finally announced pricing and launch information for the Galaxy S10 Lite.

The Galaxy S10 Lite goes on sale today (April 17) for $650 unlocked and will be available at Best Buy, Amazon, and of course Samsung's own website. At $250 more than Apple's latest budget iPhone and $50 less than the also-new OnePlus 8, the S10 Lite didn't seem like such an attractive proposition back in January, when Samsung first announced it.

Indeed, the 6.7-inch S10 Lite is much larger than the 4.7-inch iPhone SE and slightly larger than the 6.55-inch OnePlus 8. And it has an AMOLED display and two more camera lenses on the back, compared to the iPhone's slightly lower-resolution LCD panel. But at $650, the S10 Lite is an odd proposition. For only $50 more, you could get a OnePlus 8, or - and here's where it gets really confusing - a regular Galaxy S10.

That's right: that means you can get the 6.4-inch Galaxy S10 Plus (without Lite) for only $689 at the company's online store. This time last year, the S10 Plus was priced at $849.

With that in mind, one wonders why anyone would pick up the S10 Lite now: the S10 Lite is powered by the same Snapdragon 855 processor as last year's Galaxy S10 series, but features a plastic design, the regular S10 optical zoom telephoto lens has been changed to a macro lens, making it less user-friendly. In addition, the S10 Lite's Super AMOLED panel has a Full HD resolution, not the Quad HD pixels of the more premium device that inspired it.

If the Galaxy S10 Lite were priced at $500 or even $550, one could make a case for it. But at the moment, Apple is launching a smaller but considerably more powerful device, OnePlus is offering a phone with a significantly better screen and performance for $50 more, and Google is rolling out a bargain Pixel 4a that is almost certain to have a better camera for a much cheaper price The S10 Lite does not seem like a good value for the money, as it is trying to.

Furthermore, although it is called the S10 Lite, its similarity to the Galaxy S20 family is more obvious and really confusing given that it will be released after these models. Samsung also announced the Galaxy Note 10 Lite at the same time that the S10 Lite was first released, but no ETA has yet been announced for this phablet. Perhaps Samsung is rethinking its strategy.

A review of the Galaxy S10 Lite will be posted in a few weeks.