I tested the new Samsung Galaxy A57: the camera is just average, but it has one brilliant idea

The first moment I picked up the new Galaxy A57, I was immediately impressed by one thing. The new Samsung mid-ranger for 2026 is surprisingly thin and light for a large-screen phone.

In a world where its mid-range rivals, the Apple iPhone 17e and Pixel 10a, only come in one small size, the big screen of the Galaxy is alone an important advantage. A bigger screen is arguably just more practical these days with our ever-growing reliance on our phones.

But what about everything else? The Galaxy A57 has a noticeably slower processor than rivals, and the list of other upgrades is quite slim too. And the longer I used it, the more one definition kept on sounding in my head.

But before we dive deeper into that, a few words about the Galaxy A57 price and availability.

First, the Galaxy A57 is finally officially available in the US after a few years hiatus for the A5x series. However, you still won't find it at the "big three" carriers. Instead, you can buy it at Samsung.com, Amazon and Best Buy.

The full retail price for the base 128GB model is $550 (a $50 bump), but we highly recommend spending just a bit extra to buy the 256GB for $610. My take on these prices? They are a bit high for what this phone is, so I'd recommend waiting for a good deal. Thankfully, Samsung often runs various discounts, so you will likely not have to wait long to see one.

Samsung Galaxy A57 5G

6.7-inch

Triple camera

5000 mAh

8GB

$610 at Samsung

I really like how Samsung phones look in 2026, and the Galaxy A57 is no exception. It's thinner than most other phones in its class and it feels lightweight and airy, an absolute delight.

The frame is made of aluminum, not plastic, which is nice to see. It's also well put together, and while it doesn't have the latest toughened glass, I did not scratch it over the few days I tested it.

In the slim box, you will find only a USB-C charging cable, the SIM tool and some manuals. There is no included charger, case or screen protector included.



The 6.7-inch screen size now comes with thinner borders than the previous generation and this definitely helps achieve a more modern look. You still have a tiny bit of a "chin", but compared to the chunky bezels on the Pixel 10a and iPhone 17e, the Galaxy A57 looks like it comes from the future.

It's an OLED screen, of course, with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it runs nice and smooth.

Display Measurements:

Our lab measurements confirm what my eyes saw: the screen gets plenty bright for comfortable outdoor use, but it lacks the superb anti-reflective coating of the Galaxy S26 Ultra. I don't expect such a high-end feature at this price, but it's worth a mention.

Notice the max brightness number in the table above — it's more than double that of the iPhone 17e, an important advantage for outdoor use in sunny days.

One small niggle is that at night, the minimum brightness on the A57 doesn't drop as low as on the flagship Galaxy S26 series. The A57 can go down to 1.7 nits, while the S26 Plus gets significantly dimmer at 0.9 nits. That might not seem like much, but the dimmer screen on the S26 Plus is definitely easier on the eyes at night.

One of my biggest gripes with the Galaxy A57 is the optical fingerprint reader it uses. It is just incredibly slow and you have to rest your finger for a long extra moment every time you unlock the phone. I find this seriously annoying and just strange. No other phone I have tested this year suffers from such an issue, even much cheaper devices.

You also have basic 2D image-based face recognition on board. This is not secure as the 3D face recognition on iPhones and Samsung even warns you when you go to register your face that someone with a picture of you might spoof this system. Still, it's nice to have that option on board.

Samsung is not changing much in the Galaxy A57 camera this year in terms of hardware.

You still have a 50MP main camera with a sensor only slightly smaller than on flagships (1/1.56 inches on the A57 vs 1/1.3-inch on flagships). You also have a 13MP ultra-wide camera with a much smaller sensor, nearly half the size of the main camera, so you know the quality will be much worse than the main one.

For some reason, you also have a 5MP macro camera that I, personally, don't find much use for. After all, you can already get quite close with the higher quality main camera in most cases.

Let's take a look at some real-world camera samples, so you get a sense of the image quality:

Main Camera

The A57 takes a decent photo in these challenging conditions with the bright background. My main critique here is the slightly blown out highlights — a common problem on many budget phones. You can see how the iPhone 17e handles the dynamic range much better in this case, but I prefer Samsung's color science. The grass is a more natural green tone on the A57 compared to the warm, yellow tint of the iPhone picture.



The difference in color science can be dramatic between the A57 and the iPhone 17e, as the iPhone consistently favors warmer colors that are typically not very realistic.

Occasionally, though, the Galaxy tends to go berserk with the sky color. In the above night photo, the iPhone is much closer to reality than the inky blue skies on the A57.

Portrait Mode

The Galaxy also supports 1x and 2x portrait mode photos. The quality is again good, but the iPhone 17e images have more detail and more pleasing contrast, while the Galaxy looks a bit soft.



At 1x, the difference in detail is not that stark with the color science remaining the major difference between the two. 

Zoom Quality

The Galaxy A57 does not have a dedicated telephoto camera, and you can see that it's not the most impressive camera phone out there. Neither is the iPhone 17e, which does only marginally better.

If you want a great zoom camera at this price range, a discounted Galaxy S25 FE or a Pixel 10 would be your best bet, as both those phones have native telephoto cameras that produce a lot more detail.

Ultra-wide

The Galaxy A57 has an average ultra-wide camera. Images are usable even in low-light and you can see how Samsung has changed the color science a bit on the A57 vs A56, going for a darker, more true-to-life exposure. I like that.



However, on many other photos, the quality is pretty much identical.

One cool little detail is that light sources at night now have less of a glow to them, so that's a welcome improvement.

Selfies

The selfie camera on the A57 produces decent images, but they are a bit on the soft side and I personally prefer the detail and cleaner definition on selfies from the iPhone 17e.

Video Quality

The A57 can record up to 4K30 video (there is no 4K60 support), but unlike many other mid-range phones, which refuse to switch between cameras, here you actually can freely go from using the main camera to using the ultra-wide while recording. That sounds trivial for a flagship owner, but it is indeed a mid-range phone problem.

The main camera produces decent quality videos, but I wasn't very happy with the reddish-warm color balance at night that does not look realistic at all.

As for the ultra-wide camera, the quality is only usable in good light. As soon as it gets dark, the footage turns out extremely dark and not something you'd want to share.

But my biggest complaint was the overly sensitive mic. While doing these 1v1 camera comparisons, I often record holding a phone in each of my hands, and as a result, I often cover up the microphone with my hand, or the phones may touch each other while recording.

However, I've never seen a microphone pick up every single one of those touches and muffle the sound as badly as the Galaxy A57. Now mind you, this is a reviewer's problem, as you would normally not have that issue, but such an incredibly sensitive mic will eventually become a problem if you are not extremely careful how you handle your phone.

The Galaxy A57 is powered by Samsung's Exynos 1680 processor and features 8GB of RAM in all storage configurations.

This is clearly a mid-range chip and probably the A57's biggest weakness, as rivals like the Pixel 10a and iPhone 17e both have significantly faster, nearly flagship grade chips.

CPU benchmarking shows zero progress from last year's Galaxy A56 5G model. For context, the flagship Galaxy S26 Plus model is more than twice as fast in CPU speeds, which is obviously a massive difference.

At first glance, you might be surprised. The S26 Plus is the premium flagship, yet it only beats the "budget-friendly" A57 by about 6%. Why is the gap so small? Samsung has started putting high-performance Neural Processing Units (NPUs) into their cheaper phones because "Galaxy AI" features (like live translation and photo editing) are now a part of the experience.

If you are an average user, you likely won’t notice a difference in AI speed between these two phones in daily life. Both scores are high enough to handle tasks like Magic Eraser,  Generative Edit, Live Translate and Voice-to-Text.

Steel Nomad Light Stress Test: Measures your phone’s "gaming stamina" by comparing its peak speed (High) against its throttled speed after it heats up (Low), revealing whether your performance will stay smooth or start lagging during a long session.

The Galaxy A57 GPU/gaming numbers tell a story of a solid "middle-of-the-road" performer that has improved over last year but still doesn't play in the flagship "pro" league.

The good news is that the A57 is about 23% faster than last year's model. This is a decent jump for a yearly update. You'll notice smoother gameplay in titles like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty compared to the older model.

However, Apple's entry-level iPhone is nearly twice as powerful as the A57.

And in a direct comparison with the flagship Galaxy S26 Plus, you clearly see that phone score more than twice as much.

The Galaxy A57 comes with either 128GB or 256GB built-in storage (there is no microSD card support on this phone). 

Samsung limits this phone to USB 2.0 speeds, so file transfers to an SSD are much slower than on a flagship Samsung phone.

As for the on-board storage, you have UFS 3.1, a bit slower than the UFS 4.0 commonly used on flagship phones.

I ran a storage speed test to better understand the difference, and the S26 Plus is obliterating the A57 in random write speed. This is the most important stat for a user. It means when you’re installing apps, downloading gallery thumbnails or multitasking, the S26 Plus will feel significantly smoother. The A57’s result is okay for a mid-range phone, but the S26 Plus is in a different league of responsiveness.

The S26 Plus sequential write speed is where you see the flagship price difference justified. If you move a large file, the S26 Plus will finish the task four times faster.

The A57 also comes with the latest One UI 8.5 software on top of Android 16. You can see even on the box that the phone supports 6 years of OS updates. This is great news, as many other mid-range phones only offer 3 or 4 years of upgrades.

One of Samsung's staple features on flagships, DeX, which allows you to hook up your phone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and transforms the interface into a desktop-friendly one, is also not supported on the Galaxy A57.

Another important distinction with an A series phone like this one is that it does not support the full Samsung AI suite of features.

For example, in the Samsung Internet browser, the option to generate a bulleted summary of an article is missing, and so is the advanced AI-driven "Browsing Translation". You only have the Read Aloud feature. 

The good news is that you still have more features than on previous A series phones. Circle to Search is fully supported, and you also have AI Select (Smart Select), where you draw around objects on your screen to extract text or images.

In the Phone app, the A57 can also answer calls for you, ask the caller why they are calling, and show you a live transcript of that conversation. You can also enable call captions on the A57, showing you what each person says on the screen while you are in a call (but sadly, the captions are not saved to a text file for later use).