I spent two weeks with the Samsung Galaxy A57, and it

Samsung Galaxy A57 two-minute review

According to sales figures, Samsung’s budget-friendly A-series phones generally sell better than their pricier S-series siblings (aka the best Samsung phones). So, while the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the brand’s newest flashy flagship, a good deal more buyers are probably considering the Samsung Galaxy A57 instead.

Like the S26 family, this is an iterative upgrade, bringing spec tweaks and a new (but familiar) roster of colors, rather than any truly significant changes. Mind you, a price hike makes those same specs look a little bit less appealing this year, given that you’re paying extra for them.

The largely unchanged specs list means you’re getting similar highs and lows to last year’s model. The A57’s display is one standout feature, with the bright, bold screen a blessing for your Prime Video binge or commute-based gaming sessions.

Samsung’s software is another treat; One UI largely avoids the problems that befall OS packages on many other mid-range phones, and there’s much less feature-bloat here than you’ll find on the Galaxy S-series phones.

The perks return, but so do the pitfalls. The A57’s Exynos processor is simply no good for gaming, and I’d recommend doing your photo editing on a computer, too. For that matter, pictures taken on the A57 aren’t up to snuff, which is a surprise given Samsung’s usual pedigree in the field.

If you want a phone that just works, without drowning you in AI or automation features, you’ll like the Galaxy A57. It won’t suit avid photographers, gamers, or people who want a bit more out of their mobile, but it’s a reliable workhorse for the average buyer. Its battery life is also solid, and the slightly shrunk frame will fit in your hands a little better than most large-screen phones.

Galaxy A-series phones are understandably popular, but with the price hike, this latest model is a tad harder to recommend than normal. It’s definitely worth picking up if you find a solid discount, but with competitors from Nothing, Google, and various Chinese brands offering more for less right now, Samsung’s top-end mid-range phone feels a little less valuable than it should.

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: price and availability

• Released on April 10, 2026
• Starts at $549 / £529 / AU$749, but for different variants
• Price hike over Galaxy A56

The Samsung Galaxy A57 was announced on March 25, 2026, alongside the more affordable A37. It went on sale several weeks later, on April 10.

There are three variants of the phone, with availability changing by region. The only model everyone gets costs $609 / £529 / AU$849, and that’s for 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. A cheaper model with only 128GB storage is available in the US and Australia, for $549 / AU$749, while Brits get a super-charged 12GB RAM and 512GB storage model for £699. I tested the 8GB / 256GB model for this review.

For ease of viewing, here are those prices in table form:

No matter where you live, one thing’s for certain: the A57 has seen a significant price hike versus the Galaxy A56. That model started at $499 / £499 / AU$699 — again for different variants, which the table below details — meaning buyers of the new phone will have to shell out much more than they would have for last year’s model.

Given that the A56 wasn’t particularly competitive in terms of price, either, an even higher price tag for the A57 will understandably give buyers pause.

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: specs

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: design

• Thin and light phone
• Some neat design touches that improve comfort
• Four color options, all sadly lifeless

To some degree, the Samsung Galaxy A57 has inherited a trait from the ill-fated Galaxy S25 Edge: thinness. The phone’s training regimen has seen it shrink to 6.9mm thick, which is thinner than anything else in Samsung’s roster beyond the Edge.

This doesn’t result in a massive overhaul of the Galaxy A’s hand-feel, not with the height and width still stretching the hand, but it’s a nice touch that makes the device look a little more svelte.

There’s clearly also been some weight loss, with the Galaxy A57 tipping the scales to 179g; again, this is a spec beaten only by Samsung’s year-old lean machine.

Samsung has toned down the fun of its A-series color options over the past few years, and it’s no different this time around. I tested the ‘Awesome’ Icyblue (scare quotes my own), and there’s also Awesome Navy, Awesome Lilac, and Awesome Gray (now that’s what I call an oxymoron). So that’s blue, blue, nearly-blue, and gray.

On the right edge of the A57, the power button is within easy thumb reach, and the volume rocker is only a small stretch higher. I appreciated that the phone’s edge slowly curves up just ahead of the power button, which meant it was simple to naturally find the button with my thumb without needing to look.

The A57 has a triple-camera rear module on the back, which looks identical to those of the last few A-series generations, and it doesn’t stick out too far, so the phone didn’t wobble much when I put it flat on a table.

The Galaxy A57 also has an IP68 certification, which means it’s safe against ingress from small particles, and can survive submersion in water of up to 1.5m for up to 30 minutes (that may sound specific, but it’s what the ‘8’ stands for). When a phone has IP68, you can rest assured that it’s safe for all everyday functions.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: display

• 6.7 inches, 1080 x 2340 resolution
• 120Hz refresh rate, 1,900 nits max brightness
• Super AMOLED Plus gives display punch

The Samsung Galaxy A57 gets a 6.7-inch display, with a thin bezel that’s broken up only by a small punch-hole for the front-facing camera.

Like the A56’s panel, it has a 1080 x 2340 resolution and hits a 120Hz refresh rate, so it’ll handle anything Netflix or your chosen mobile game can throw at it.

Colors are bright and vibrant, thanks in part to two upgrades over the previous model: a higher max brightness (1,900 nits) and the use of a Super AMOLED Plus panel, which offers a wider color gamut. It’s been said before, and it’s truer than ever now: it’s hard to find a better screen on a mid-range phone than on a Galaxy A-series device.

The A57 also has what Samsung calls Vision Booster, a feature that turns brightness and vibrancy up to 11 when the device recognizes that you’re watching content outdoors (as in, grappling with the shiny, reflective sunlight on the display). I didn’t have an A56 to test it against, and it’s not a feature that you can manually toggle, but I never had a problem using the A57 while outdoors.

A fingerprint sensor embedded under the phone’s display worked well in my experience, never failing to recognize my thumb.

• Display score: 4.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: software

• Android 16 with One UI 8.5
• Six years of OS updates
• Software is cleaner and simpler than rivals’

Out of the box, the Galaxy A57 runs Android 16, the latest version of Android at the time of its release, with Samsung pledging six major Android updates to the phone.

This isn’t stock Android but One UI 8.5, which the Samsung Galaxy S26 also runs on, except here you get a tuned-down version of that same software.

Some may miss the flagship phone’s various premium features (you don’t get generative AI tools like Drawing Assist, for instance), but I actually preferred the Galaxy A57’s interface: you don’t get inundated with AI features, random reminders, and gimmicky tools that do little.

One feature you do get is an upgraded version of Circle to Search. If you press and hold the home button, you can circle anything on screen and Google search it. The selling point of this feature is that it gives you the ability to find the outfits of people you see online — a pretty niche use case, it must be said — but I found Circle to Search pretty useful for searching for actors I recognized, settings in videos that I wanted to locate, and sports teams that I didn’t recognize by their uniforms.

A common feature of mid-range smartphones is bloatware, but the Galaxy A57 is pristine and clean out of the box. You get barely any unwanted pre-installed apps (I can overlook Netflix and Spotify, given how ubiquitous they are), and there are barely any Samsung apps pre-installed either.

I’m a fan of the look of One UI, and it offers loads of customization options. You can bend the wallpaper, color palette, and icons to your will, and add Samsung-made widgets and tools that change how you use the phone.

I like to set up Modes on Galaxy phones, which let me quickly change various settings at the tap of a button. For example, I can design a Game mode, which mutes notifications and boosts screen and performance power, or set up a Sleep mode, which automatically turns on my alarm and switches the display to an eye-friendly grayscale. To easily switch these Modes on and off, I can plonk a carousel on my home page. It’s pretty impressive stuff.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: cameras

• 50MP main, 12MP ultra-wide, and 5MP macro cameras
• Cameras lack some vibrancy and optimization
• A range of useful camera features

Samsung has been using the same camera setup on its A50-series for years now (the A53 was the last model with a different main sensor), and in 2026, it’s starting to show show its age. It’s simply not competitive compared to other similar-priced phones.

The main camera is a 50MP f/1.8 unit, which is joined by a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens and a 5MP f/2.4 macro lens. Around the front, there’s a 12MP f/2.2 selfie snapper.

In anything shy of blinding sunshine or studio lighting, the Galaxy A57 struggled to capture an adequate level of vibrancy or color detail — for instance, in the camera samples below, you’ll see foliage that looks desaturated and lacks dynamic range. An upgraded ISP (Image Signal Processing) chip was cited as an upgrade with this phone, but it’s not made a significant improvement.

Get some strong sunlight, and some colors do seep through, but you can’t control how sunny it is outside, and besides, sunshine didn’t always fix the problem. Other phones do well to edit photos to pull out the contrast and boost the saturation if needs be, and I was surprised by how light-touch (read: ineffectual) the Galaxy A57 could be.

For some praise, I’ll point to the auxiliary lenses. I was impressed by how consistent the color was between lenses — I often find ultra-wides lack the color of their main siblings — and the lack of distortion on the wide lens. The macro was a little finicky at finding focus on close subjects, but it’s definitely more useful than many others I’ve tested (though it doesn’t come close to making up for the lack of a dedicated zoom camera).

Selfies on the Galaxy A57 were a little better, offering some contrast that will make social media pictures look postable, though, as you can see in the pictures below, Portrait mode struggled with fluffy strands of hair.

The A57 offers you a reasonable range of expected camera modes, including Night and Samsung’s stalwart Food, and there’s also the A-series-exclusive Fun mode, which basically offers you Snapchat filters on your camera app. Single Take isn’t available by default, but you can enable it via the Camera Assistant app in the Samsung Store.

Video recording hits 60fps at 1080p or 30fps at 4K, with a slow-mo app that doesn’t reveal its framerate.

Once you’ve taken a photo, you can use a few tools to brush it up in the Gallery app. There’s no built-in chatbot to AI slopify your pictures like in the S26 series, and instead, you get Object Eraser and a remaster tool, which auto-applies edits. The latter’s actually pretty good, and I found it reliable for adding some zest to the default pictures that otherwise lacked it.

• Camera score: 3.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy A57 camera samples

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: performance and audio

• Samsung’s Exynos 1680 chip + 8GB RAM (for most)
• Fine for everyday use, not for gaming
• Bluetooth 6.0 for audio

Samsung’s Galaxy A-series phones have never won awards for their blazing-fast performance — plenty of Chinese mobiles at this price point can run rings around them — and the Galaxy A57 is no different.

The phone has an Exynos 1680 chipset, made by Samsung itself, paired with 8GB RAM in most versions.

Geekbench 6 multi-core benchmark tests returned scores in the 4,400s. That’s a step above the 3,900s we saw in the A56, but less than half of what the S26 Ultra returned, and a big step below similar-priced alternatives I’ve tested recently, like the 8,600-scoring Poco X8 Pro Max. Unfortunately, every 3DMark test I ran crashed, which wasn’t necessarily the fault of the phone (sometimes, new devices just don’t like benchmarking software), but it did mean I wasn’t able to dig much further into the A57’s numbered performance…

… until I started actually playing games.

The A57 could handle well-optimized games like Call of Duty: Mobile, but only on lower graphics settings. Try to match the display quality with some resolution or graphics effects, and the handset would suffer. It would also heat up a little during longer gaming sessions, which is not something you’ll encounter with most Snapdragon-powered phones, for instance.

So, the Galaxy A57 is no performance wunderkind, even if you can play certain titles with compromises. But if you’re not a gamer, you can ignore all that, as the phone has all the performance credentials necessary for non-intensive everyday tasks like scrolling and streaming. If I weren’t an avid gamer, I’d probably deem the Galaxy A57 powerful enough for me.

Audio-wise, you’re looking at support for Bluetooth 6.0, with the built-in stereo speakers about as passable as on any other phone at this price point. And no, there’s no 3.5mm jack, so you’ll have to use the USB-C port for wired audio.

• Performance score: 3.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: battery life

• Average-sized 5,000mAh battery
• Single day of use per charge
• 45W charging powers the phone in roughly 90 mins

The Samsung Galaxy A57 has a 5,000mAh battery, which is the same size battery as you’ll find in the A56, as well as the flagship Galaxy S26 Ultra.

A capacity like this is, in most phones, shorthand for ‘all-day battery life’. That’s no different with the Galaxy A57 — I could use the device as much as I wanted, without worrying that it’d run out of juice.

You won’t get two days of battery life, though — not unless you don’t use your phone very much. For average use, you’ll get about a day and a half all in.

The A57 powers at 45W, so it’s not particularly fast, and with a compatible charger, you’ll get from empty to full in about an hour and a half. When the handset’s plugged in, it’ll tell you how long it’ll take to power up at its current speed, which is a really useful quality of life feature that I appreciated.

• Battery score: 3.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: value

Samsung’s Galaxy A-series phones are reliable and have some great traits, but they don’t offer as impressive value for money as their competitors. Bear in mind that A57 isn’t cheap; at its price, it’s firmly in the ‘mid-range’ category.

Many rivals at a similar price point will offer you one or two incredible specs along with a few average ones, like a huge battery, incredibly fast charging, a top-end processor, or a telephoto zoom camera. If you wanted the A57’s specs from another brand, you’d probably find them for much less money.

Samsung does nothing to sweeten the deal, and so it’s hard to argue that the A57 offers particularly exciting value for money. But as reliability and longevity go, there aren’t many ‘safer’ all-round options than this one.

• Value score: 3.5 / 5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A57?

Buy it if…