Samsung Galaxy A57 review: Reliable everyday experience with one big question– the price

Samsung’s A series models are positioned in the mid-range segment, but this year, the South Korean giant appears to have made changes to its pricing strategy. With the launch of Galaxy A57 and Galaxy A37 models, the prices have moved closer to the high-end segment, while retaining the upper mid-range specifications. 

Although it's not only Samsung, several smartphone brands have been increasing prices across segments due to high component costs and rising manufacturing expenses. Well, priced at Rs 56,999, the Samsung Galaxy A57 offers a sleek design, powerful AI-powered capabilities, a triple camera setup, and a clean OneUI software. We have been testing the device for a couple of weeks to know how it lives up to the hype, and if it's worth buying in a competitive smartphone market. 

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Samsung Galaxy A57 review: Design and display

While there are no significant design changes, Samsung has made the Galaxy A57 even slimmer at just 6.9mm, and it weighs 179 grams, which makes it 19 grams slimmer than its predecessor. Apart from a slimmer design, it retains the aluminium frame, glossy glass rear panel, protected with Gorilla Glass Victus+, and a triple camera setup. 

The Galaxy A57 also offers an IP68 rating upgrade, offering improved water and dust protection. Overall, the design looks minimal and classy; it feels comfortable in the hand. However, it does attract fingerprints on the glass back.

On the front, the smartphone features a 6.7-inch FHD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1900nits peak brightness. When it comes to offerings, crisp visuals and vibrant colours, Samsung never disappoints; the smartphones deliver a vibrant and smooth user experience that remains consistent across its devices. 

With an adaptive refresh rate, the Galaxy A57 felt responsive, and we did not face any noticeable lag or stutter during everyday usage, scrolling, or multitasking. It also supports HDR10+ and Vision Booster, delivering crisp colours, smooth animations, and decent brightness levels. Therefore, the Samsung Galaxy A57 is perfect for streaming and day-to-day usage. The only thing that felt distracting was the bezels at the bottom, slightly affecting viewing. Apart from this, it offers an immersive display experience.

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Samsung Galaxy A57 review: Camera

The Samsung Galaxy A57 features a triple camera setup that consists of a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and a 5MP macro lens, offering similar sensors as its predecessor. Coming to the image quality, the smartphone captures impressive daylight images with natural colours and crisp details, making it perfect for casual and social media photography. However, the 50MP camera mode captures soft images that miss out on sharpness. They look more like artificially sharpened, which affects the image quality, but it remains worthy for social media posts.

In low-light conditions, it also delivers well-balanced images with bright highlights and controlled noise, though some fine details may soften in very dim environments. Coming to close-up shots with the 2x zoom mode, the smartphone captures decent images, but it may not be the best compared to competitors.

The ultra-wide camera also captures promising images with good dynamic range and natural colours. The 5MP macro lens captures decent close-up shots with satisfactory detail in well-lit conditions.

On the front, the Galaxy A57 features a 12MP camera that delivers impressive images with natural skin tones and decent saturation in well-lit conditions. Overall, the smartphone delivers a great camera experience for casual photographers.

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: Performance, software and battery

The Samsung Galaxy A57 is powered by the in-house Exynos 1680 processor paired with up to 12GB LPDDR5 RAM. It is also equipped with a new AMD-powered Xclipse 550 GPU, but is the combination enough for power users? 

Well, in day-to-day use, the smartphone offered reliable performance when it comes to browsing, scrolling through social media, casual multitasking, streaming, etc. It also manages casual gaming without any stutter or lag, making it a reliable companion. However, if you push the smartphone to demanding tasks such as extended gaming sessions, you may notice it struggling. 

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We tested its gaming performance with BGMI on higher graphics settings for nearly 45 minutes, and it started to get warm, at times it was uncomfortable to play, and we could also notice frame drops and minor lags. While it has come with 13% larger vapour chamber, the thermal management still struggles to maintain stable performance during extended gaming sessions. 

However, during an intensive multitasking session, it maintains a fairly stable performance for the most part. Therefore, you can rely on the Samsung Galaxy A57 for everyday use, casual gaming, and seamless multitasking. 

It runs on One UI 8.5 based on Android 16, offering a clean UI experience across touchpoints. The smartphone supports all the latest features from the UI front and Galaxy AI, including voice transcription, AI Select, Object Eraser, Auto Trim for video editing, and more. In addition, it will offer 6 years of OS updates, making it future-ready.

In terms of battery life, the Samsung Galaxy A57 is backed by a 5000mAh battery that offers about 7 hours of screen time, and it could last you a day with low to medium usage. Although it’s not the best, it still delivers dependable battery backup for everyday tasks. It supports 45W charging, which takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes to fully charge the device.

Samsung Galaxy A57 review: Verdict 

The Samsung Galaxy A57 caters to casual users who prefer a punchy display, a sleek design, and smooth day-to-day performance, decent camera performance, and clean software. However, despite being priced at nearly Rs 60,000, the smartphone misses out on powerful performance capabilities, and makes it feel slightly overpriced compared to some of its competitors in the segment. Therefore, if you need a device for heavy gaming or demanding tasks, then you may want to look for other options like Vivo X200 FE, Motorola Signature, and others.