Still good enough, but only just

Samsung’s Galaxy A series has a special place in my tech-loving heart — it always has. It’s where I started reviewing and where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years. And at one point, it felt like my go-to pick when someone needed a cheap phone recommendation. There was just simply a Samsung Galaxy A device at every price point for every buyer.

Since then, though, things have changed. Samsung’s cheap Android competition has improved, and the Galaxy A series has merely stayed the course. It’s counted on long-term updates and a slow trickle of AI features to stay ahead of the likes of CMF, Motorola, TCL, and more, and I’m not sure it’s working.

Enter the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G. It’s cheap, it’s good-looking, and it has six years of updates, but can that move the needle in 2026?

I’m not sure when I first noticed this, or even when I first pointed it out in an article, but Samsung likes to use the Galaxy A series as a kind of testing ground. Usually, it’ll float a design change across its budget models for a year (or maybe two) before bringing it to the flagship Galaxy S series.

So, imagine my surprise when the Galaxy A17 5G arrived with its three cameras arranged in a single pill-shaped camera bump. Then, imagine my further surprise when the same thing happened on the Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra — at least to an extent. I think it’s a nice touch, and one that helps to break free of the super-simple design language that made Apple treat Samsung like its generic Android alternative in advertising.

There are, of course, several other design elements at play on the Galaxy A17 5G that haven’t — and won’t — make their way up Samsung’s ecosystem. Although I quite like it, I know the Key Island, which houses the capacitive fingerprint sensor and volume rocker, is resigned to life on the affordable end. It juts out only because it needs to, to give the fingerprint sensor the space it requires without eating into the battery capacity. The good news, at least, is that the fingerprint sensor is quick and reliable thanks to Samsung’s repeated usage from one generation to the next.

The Key Island has another job, too: breaking up the Galaxy A17’s otherwise smooth, somewhat slick frame. Almost every last bit of this cheap Android phone is plastic, which is fine for durability, but not always for getting a good grip. The tiny lip of the Key Island gives me at least a little bit of a clue where I can rest a finger, which is a little bit reassuring — not that it helps with the smudgy, fingerprint-loving blue finish of the phone itself.

Gloss and plastic aside, there’s one piece of every Samsung design I can count on to punch at (or above) its price, and that’s the display. The Galaxy A17 5G is no exception, picking up Gorilla Glass Victus protection for its 6.7-inch Super AMOLED panel. It’s tough and crisp, packing a 1080p resolution, which has been plenty sharp across my entire stretch with the phone. Interestingly, though, I somehow managed to scratch the display while on a trip with the phone in my backpack. It’s a small scratch, but one I’m constantly aware of.

As for the display itself, Samsung capped its cheapest phone at a 90Hz refresh rate and 800 nits of peak brightness, which is a bit below what I’m used to from the competition. Motorola’s Moto G Play (2026) offers 120Hz and 1,000 nits at a similar price point, while the CMF Phone 2 Pro bumps it even higher to 3,000 nits.

Of course, the slightly (technically) brighter Moto G Play comes with the drawback of using an LCD panel in place of the Galaxy A17 5G’s OLED, which means it may not always look like an upgrade. The Galaxy A17 should achieve deeper blacks and better contrast, which will be more pleasing to the eye than Motorola’s slightly better, slightly flatter brightness.

The bright side of all this — no pun intended — is that the Galaxy A17 5G looks good enough in everyday usage that you’ll probably forget about the brightness and refresh rate unless you’re in direct sunlight. I had no problems scrolling through my Pokémon Go roster while in a bright coffee shop, nor did I have complaints keeping up with PetaPixel’s latest video review.

As expected, though, I had a bit more trouble while walking around Durham, North Carolina, trying to capture camera samples. I kept having to adjust my sunglasses to peek at the image preview, even though my Galaxy A17 5G was set to full brightness for almost my entire walk. It made it very difficult to tell whether or not I got a properly exposed shot until I got back to my hotel room — much too late for me to try again.

On the durability side, Samsung set its most affordable phone up with an IP54 rating against water and dust, which is decent but probably not reassuring enough for a day at the beach. I’ve yet to feel like my Galaxy A17 5G was in danger in a Spring full of East Coast showers, but it won’t be coming to the pool with me once Memorial Day rolls around.

With cheap Android phones, familiar hardware is often part of the game. I don’t always expect too much change from one generation to the next, because it’s not usually very important to fix what isn’t really broken. Sure, it’s nice to get a tweak here and there, but it’s mostly what goes on under the hood that I care about. And, unfortunately, Samsung has fallen into a bit of a bad habit.

Take a look at the specs of these two phones:

• Phone A: Exynos 1330 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 128GB base storage
• Phone B: Exynos 1330, 4GB of RAM, 128GB base storage

If you had to guess, which phone would you think is newer? The answer is Phone A; Phone B is the Galaxy A16 5G, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? The chipset is the same in the US, the memory is the same, and so is the storage, but one phone is a little newer and launched with an updated version of Android — but it’s only Android 15, not Android 16. It then took Samsung a few months to bring Android 16 to the Galaxy A17, which I fear will count as one of its years of updates almost immediately.

Anyway, that lack of change was enough to make me nervous heading into our usual slate of benchmarks. But I’ve been proven wrong before, so I loaded up our CPU and GPU tests and set the Galaxy A17 to do its thing.

Unfortunately, my fears were correct. The Galaxy A17 5G is no benchmarking star, nor does it really offer much of an edge over its direct predecessor. Yes, it comes out on top in the single-core portion of the Geekbench 6 test, but it’s promptly passed by Motorola’s cheapest options in the multi-core test and once again in the PCMark test.

Granted, the Galaxy A17 5G is cheaper than either of those phones, but its 5nm chipset should be a little more efficient than the 6nm Dimensity 6300 (which Samsung also used on the Galaxy A16 5G in international markets) with the same 4GB of RAM across the board.

The results didn’t get better when I switched to the GPU-intensive Wild Life Extreme stress test, either. In fact, both of Samsung’s budget options sit practically on top of each other and once again below Motorola’s options. It’s pretty disappointing to see a general lack of any desire to improve performance from what was already a just-okay Galaxy A16 5G.

Of course, that’s all lab-based performance, so what does it mean for the real world? Honestly, I felt pretty let down by the Galaxy A17 5G. Although I could do all the things I mentioned above, snapping photos and watching YouTube videos, it felt like even the lightest workload was too much for the Exynos 1330 chipset. Loading Pokémon Go took several minutes, and waiting for it to become playable took even longer. I would jump from one menu to the next, stuttering the whole time rather than running smoothly through even the simplest interface.

Getting the phone up and running after an update, a dead battery, or simply being away for a day or two was a drag, too. The Galaxy A17 5G seems to treat its 4GB of RAM like 4MB, slowing to a crawl and often freezing if I try to swipe out of an app too quickly. It doesn’t have to be a game, either — quitting the default weather app was just as bad.

Perhaps the one bright spot in the Galaxy A17 5G’s otherwise mediocre performance is that it knows how to make the most of the 5,000mAh battery. When I would step away for a day or two (or three or four), I would still come back to the phone holding a bit of a charge — usually enough to get me through the rest of the day without panic. And, to put that drain to a more complete test, I ran it through our simulated battery drain.

Outside of the one blemish in web browsing — and the lack of 4K video — the Galaxy A17 5G set the tone for our other cheap competitors, lasting longer in everything from a Zoom call to a looped 4K video. It’s an impressive level of efficiency in the face of several struggles, and I’d like to convince myself that the stellar battery performance isn’t just because the Exynos 1330 throttles down to nearly nothing under pressure.

Speaking of reaching nearly nothing, Samsung’s stout 5,000mAh cell will eventually reach nothing, even if it takes a while. When it does, your charging options are a little disappointing. There is, as expected, no wireless charging at this price point, but Samsung hasn’t upgraded the Galaxy A17 5G’s wired speeds either, so it still runs at 25W, the same as it’s been for several years. And yes, I know that’s the same speed you’ll get with the premium Galaxy S26, but Motorola will give you 30W wired speeds on the Moto G (2026), and CMF’s Phone 2 Pro pushes 33W for good measure.

As a result, it’s tough to look at the graph above and feel too good about the Galaxy A17 5G. No, it’s not the slowest of the group — that’s the Moto G Play (2026) with its dismal 18W peak — but it is the second slowest, somehow losing around 12 minutes compared to its predecessor. I used a compatible 30W charger for the test, too, so I’m at something of a loss as to why Samsung’s Galaxy A17 5G charged so slowly, but I’ll still advise you to grab a new charger if you have a chance.

Having reviewed many budget phones, I know it’s also difficult to knock them for making only minor changes to their camera setups. Usually, if you can get a pretty reliable 50MP primary sensor, you’re doing pretty well. On that front, Samsung succeeds — its primary camera is nice and reliable at 1x and 2x zoom, as you’re about to see. It also picks up optical image stabilization, which helps a little bit for low-light and action shots, as well as eliminating some of the hand shake from longer zoom photos.

However, after pretty much bashing its peripheral ultrawide and dedicated macro sensors on the Galaxy A16 5G, I’ll admit I was hoping for changes. I didn’t get them. Once again, the Galaxy A17 5G comes with a 5MP ultrawide sensor, the same impossibly small 1/5-inch sensor as its predecessor. It’s backed by a familiar 2MP dedicated macro sensor, which means I anticipated many of the same problems as the previous generation before I even took the phone out into the wild.

It’s not all bad news — there’s still night mode and fun mode, which uses Snapchat filters in the default camera app — but don’t expect the Galaxy A17 5G to notch a place among the best budget camera phones, let alone the best camera phones in general.

With that, let’s check out some camera samples.

Despite my fairly low expectations, the Galaxy A17 5G occasionally surprises me. I didn’t expect to achieve such a deeply black background in the shot to the left, which highlights the features of each bust impressively well. This is exactly where Samsung’s OIS comes into play, as it meant I didn’t need such a fast shutter under the museum lights. Portrait mode on the windmill next to it is pretty good, too, though it mostly works on the higher bricks and struggles a bit on the HVAC utilities lower.

Durham’s bull statue is another decent example and helps highlight just how much I prefer Samsung’s 2x zoom over 1x, but there’s no way to apply portrait mode outside 1x zoom, which is disappointing. I know there’s only so much Samsung can do with its small sensor, but I would have loved a shallower depth of field in front of the cluttered race expo.

As I quickly learned, Durham is a neat city full of old machinery and factory spaces on the American Tobacco campus, opening me up to images like the one on the left. Although the buildings are now offices and residences, I like the level of brick detail that the Galaxy A17 5G captured without oversaturating the reds and greens in the door and the park in the background.

Unfortunately, once you flip to the Galaxy A17 5G’s supporting sensors, you quickly remember that nothing has changed. The macro sensor is still poor, making it almost impossible to identify what the image on the left shows. For those wondering, it’s a small detail of a statue in an art gallery — I know, I wouldn’t have guessed if I hadn’t taken the picture.

I do, at least, like the image of the Lucky Strike water tower, which I took with the ultrawide camera. I think it does a pretty good job of establishing scale, and the coloring in the sky is much more accurate than the other ultrawide sample on the far left.

The Galaxy A17 5G’s zoom flexibility isn’t very good, either. There’s no telephoto sensor, so the primary camera has to do all the heavy lifting, covering the full range from 1x to 10x zoom. Honestly, though, I think images up to about 4x are usable enough that you could post them on social media without concern. The color profile is a bit lighter than at 1x, but I think it actually makes the details of the retired Durham Bulls numbers easier to pick out. At 10x, things get pretty fuzzy, so you may not want to punch in all the way unless you absolutely have to.

On the front, the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G houses a 13MP selfie camera in its Infinity-U notch. It’s not bad — the lighting and details in my face are pretty consistent — but it’s only really there for the basics. I don’t know that I’d trust the portrait mode very often as a guy with longer hair, but it handled my shoulders and shirt pretty well. As for my hair, though, what’s going on there, Samsung? It’s not the same color as the building or the pole behind me, so how did so much of it get chopped off?

For those seeking video chops, the Galaxy A17 5G is about on par with others in its price range. It tops out at 1080p video at 30fps on both the front and back, and the stabilization is alright. It won’t win you any cinematography awards, but if you need to pull out your phone to get a quick clip at a concert, you can still show it to family and friends later.

You can also check out full-resolution versions of these camera samples (and more) at this Google Drive link.

Last year, when I finished my review of the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G, I told you it was still worth buying. No, it wasn’t flashy, but it offered long-term software support, a customizable One UI experience, and three cameras — even if only one of them was any good. I felt like it was a good enough value at just $200, too.

This year, I’m not so confident. Sure, almost everything about the Galaxy A17 5G is the same as before, with the same chipset (in the US), software updates, cameras (plus OIS), and even the rock-bottom price. Samsung kept the price locked in at $200 despite most other things in life becoming more expensive, and normally I would treat that as cause for celebration. This time, though, it feels like Samsung is trying to bail itself out.

Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time with the Galaxy A17 5G waiting for it to catch up, wondering why I didn’t have a different phone in my pocket. I’m used to large apps struggling the first few times I start them up, eventually figuring out how to run properly, but Samsung’s cheapest phone never got there. Even after a few weeks with Pokémon Go, it still grinds to a screeching halt when I make it past the loading screen. It’s a remarkably poor performance, regardless of how cheap the phone is.

And yes, Samsung has already delivered on its update promise better than most other brands do with their cheapest offerings, but I don’t know that I’m glad to see Android 16. My Galaxy A17 5G was already struggling under its own weight, and further, bulkier Android patches aren’t likely to put much pep in its step.

So, if you want my best advice, it’s to look elsewhere. The cheap Android market is a crowded one, full of much more capable options if you’re willing to spend just a bit more money. Personally, I’d start by stretching your budget a little further for the Moto G Power (2026) ($299.99 at Amazon).

Although it will cost you a bit more, it’ll reward you with faster charging, a smoother refresh rate, and a colorful Pantone finish that is much more comfortable to hold than Samsung’s plastic. Also, if you buy directly from Motorola, there have been some promotional deals to get free goodies like the Moto Tag and Moto Buds 2 Plus, which is almost like knocking the price down a little bit — don’t expect those to last forever, though. Motorola’s budget models also ship with the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset onboard, putting them on par with the Galaxy A17 5G in terms of raw performance.

Unfortunately, though, Motorola’s 2026 offerings come with a catch: Although they ship with Android 16 onboard, they only guarantee two years of update support, meaning that you’ll see Android 18 if you stick around but not much else. Personally, I still prefer Motorola’s software, but I’m not sure such a short ride is worth the price of admission.

Depending on your carrier, you might also want to look at something like the CMF Phone 2 Pro ($259 at Manufacturer site), which remains one of the cooler budget phones on the market. It’s been overhauled from the original CMF Phone, switching from interchangeable back panels to an optional cover. Think of it as the back part of a case, nice to have but no longer integral to the structure of the phone.

It also costs more than the Galaxy A17 5G, but it gives you a Dimensity 7300 Pro chipset and access to Nothing’s Essential Space for logging thoughts and building AI-powered reminders. You will, however, have to keep in mind that the CMF Phone 2 Pro only really works with T-Mobile in the US, with limited support from both Verizon and AT&T, and it’s only available via a beta program from Nothing, not officially sold.