Transcription
[Music] Samsung has a new budget-oriented mid-ranger, the Galaxy A17 5G. So, what's new this time around? And is this a good budget phone to get in 2025? I'm Will for GSM Marina and let's find out in our Galaxy A17 review. [Music]
The new Samsung Galaxy A17 is a low-tier A-series mid-ranger that you might be considering if you're on a budget and don't need a bunch of fancy features. Over the years, we've seen many higher-end features trickle down to lower-end Samsung phones. But this year, not a ton has changed.
One of the main changes this time around is the design. The phone is matte now, not glossy, and you have a back made of glass fiber. The frame is still plastic, though. The new build has allowed Samsung to slim down the phone a bit and shave off a few grams, too.
Another change is with the main camera. It's the same camera as before, but now it has optical stabilization. We wish they had added 4K video recording instead. Like the previous model, the A17 has IP54 rated ingress protection against dust and splashes of water.
The display is the same too, except that it now has Gorilla Glass Victus protection. Otherwise, it's still a 6.7-inch OLED with a 1080p resolution and a 90 Hz refresh rate. The display is sharp enough and as an OLED is contrasty, too. There are no fancy features like support for HDR video playback, but we didn't expect them here either. And it's nice that you get a fast 90 Hz refresh rate to smooth out your swiping and scrolling. It isn't adaptive, though, so it won't dial down to save energy.
The brightness here hasn't improved since last year. In fact, it's a little less. We achieved about 350 nits with a manual slider, and in auto brightness mode, this maxed out at less than 750 nits. As before, there isn't a pair of stereo speakers, just a single bottom-firing one. It has good loudness, but the audio quality is flat with noticeable distortion at higher volume. You can have a listen for yourself through the comparison tool linked below.
The Galaxy A17 has a fingerprint reader built into the power button on the side. It's speedy and reliable, and the phone comes with 128 or 256 GB of storage, and that is expandable through micro SD.
Like the rest of the Galaxy A-series phones this year, the A17 launches with One UI 7 out of the box based on Android 15. It actually includes some of the features that you'd find on the flagship phones, but you're missing the AI-based functionality here. You do get Circle to Search at least, and it works as you'd expect. You can find out more about One UI 7 by checking out our dedicated video. And like before, Samsung promises plenty of support, even for its budget phones. The A17 will get seven major OS upgrades. Whether or not the hardware of this phone will hold up 7 years down the line is a different story.
The chipset of the A17 is an Exynos 1330, which is made in-house by Samsung. This is the same chipset that was inside last year's model. In benchmarks, the A17 does about as you'd expect for a budget device. In fact, maybe even a little worse, as some competitors have more power under the hood. Additionally, we ran into stutters and lag when using the phone, even when doing regular everyday tasks. This could be partly due to our unit having just 4 GB of RAM instead of the higher 8 GB option.
Like last year, the A17 has a 5,000 mAh battery. So, with a similar screen and same chipset, we expected about the same battery life. Our prediction was right. The Galaxy A17 earned an overall active use score of 11 hours and 48 minutes in our tests. Very similar to last year. The battery life is nothing special, just average. You also again get 25W wired charging with no charger included in the box. With a proper adapter, the phone was able to charge from 0 to 48% in half an hour, and a full charge took an hour and 20 minutes.
Onto the cameras, which are the same as on the previous model, except that the main camera has OIS now. It's paired with an ultrawide camera and a macro cam. During the day, the main camera's photos come out more than decent. Colors are punchy and lively, and there's good sharpness. The dynamic range could use some improvement, though. We also took a few people shots and these come out pretty decent. If you zoom digitally at two times, the results are okay, but far from perfect. You get a good level of detail and plenty of color, but sharpness goes down significantly, and the contrast and dynamic range leave more to be desired.
In low light, the main cam's photos are largely unimpressive with limited dynamic range, a bit too much noise, and low contrast. Colors could use a boost, too. Luckily, the night mode fixes most of these issues, introducing more color, improving contrast and sharpness, and clearing up the noise.
The ultrawide camera is pretty basic, and it's lower res than the ultrawide cams you'd find in many competing smartphones. Don't expect very sharp or detailed photos or a wide dynamic range, but at least the colors are nice and so is the contrast. Not that we expected much, but the ultrawide shots at night are quite fuzzy. They're lacking in detail with plenty of noise. Night mode isn't available on this camera either.
And now we have the 2-megapixel macro close-ups. These are far from impressive with low detail and contrast and dull colors. On top of that, because of the fixed focus, it's tricky to get these to come out sharp.
Selfies, on the other hand, are solid. These come from a 13-megapixel front-facing camera, and they have plenty of detail, lively colors, and a relatively wide dynamic range. Sharpness could be better, but these results are good for the price range.
The Galaxy A17 supports video recording at a max resolution of 1080p with any of its cameras. The main camera captures decent-looking videos for this resolution with punchy colors, good contrast, and enough detail. You actually can record in 4K resolution if you download the third-party app Open Camera.
Moving on to the ultrawide clips in 1080p. These aren't great. The footage is fuzzy with clipped highlights and color fringing. The electronic stabilization on the A17 is somewhat decent, but still leaves a bit more to be desired. It's even worse in 4K from the Open Camera app where there is no EIS at all. And the nighttime video is unimpressive. As expected, it lacks detail and has very limited dynamic range.
So, that's the Galaxy A17. Just like the previous model, you get a high-refresh-rate OLED screen and Samsung software and support. There's a solid main camera and selfies come out decent, too. However, our biggest issue with last year's A16 is back again: the low-end chipset and laggy user experience. Again, this could be in part due to our unit having just 4 GB of RAM. We'd recommend going for the Galaxy A17 in its higher RAM variant, but then the price would be higher, too. There are competitors with more powerful hardware and better battery life.
If you are dead set on getting a Samsung, the Galaxy A16 is almost the same phone as this. And the A26 and A36 have gone down in price a lot, too. So, until this phone's price goes down as well, the A17 5G is a bit hard to recommend.
Thanks for watching, guys. If you're looking for alternatives, last year's Galaxy A36 is going for a similar price. Or you could also check out the Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G. Let us know what you think and I'll see you on the next one.