Samsung's announcement of the new $450 Galaxy A37 and $550 Galaxy A57 today brings both good news and bad news for value-conscious customers looking for a cheaper phone.

Watch this: Samsung's New Budget Galaxy A37 and A57: Improved Designs and AI Features

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Much like we've seen on the flagship Galaxy S26, both phones are priced higher than the Galaxy A36 and A56 they are replacing -- in this case by $50 -- while storage options for the phones still start at 128GB. But both phones did get a design improvement that features IP68 water resistance and feature the newly updated Circle to Search, with enhancements like Find the Look for identifying outfits.

Starting with the $450 Galaxy A37, this phone has a 6.7-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It runs on Samsung's Exynos 1480 processor and has a 45-watt wired charging speed, which Samsung says will recharge its 5,000-mAh battery from 0% to 65% in 30 minutes.

The phone is made from plastic and comes in four colors: charcoal, gray-green, white and -- my favorite -- lavender. (Note: Samsung adds the word "Awesome" in front of all of these color names, but I'm going to save us from this.) The A37 also comes in a 256GB model that costs $540.

The A37 cameras include a 50-megapixel wide, an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 5-megapixel macro on the back, along with a 12-megapixel selfie camera on the front. The A37 gets a sampling of Galaxy AI features, including object eraser for editing photos, language translation and an upgraded Bixby assistant.

The $550 Galaxy A57 moves up from plastic to a metal body but only comes in navy. It also has a 6.7-inch display, but weighs in at 179 grams, which is markedly lighter than the 198g of the A56. During my hands-on time, it was noticeably light, especially for a phone with the larger display size.

The phone runs on the Samsung Exynos 1680 processor. It also features a few more AI photo editing tools like Best Face for fixing group photos where someone is blinking. The cameras on the A57 include a 50-megapixel wide, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 5-megapixel macro on the back and, like the A37, includes a 12-megapixel selfie camera.

A step-up 256GB model costs $610, but it's worth noting this price is really close to the $650 Galaxy S25 FE, which includes all of the Galaxy AI features along with a telephoto camera.

I'm bummed but not surprised to see the increased cost of the A37 and A57 versus the 2025 models, which a Samsung representative said is attributable to current market conditions when I asked about the ongoing RAM shortage.

During my hands-on time, though, I did find both phones to look quite nice, with the lavender model likely providing plenty of competition to the colors of the $499 Google Pixel 10A. Both phones will be on sale starting April 9.