Samsung Galaxy A17 5G

Pros

• Big and bright screen
• Good photos for the price
• Six years of software and security support

Cons

• Multitasking can be rough
• Noticeably sluggish

Samsung's $200 Galaxy A17 5G makes me thankful that Android is so flexible. That's because during my three weeks using the most affordable 2026 Galaxy phone, I kept running into roadblocks with the phone's underpowered hardware.

Whenever I tried to run a navigation app on the phone at the same time as streaming music, I found that either the song had noticeable pauses and dips or the navigation app would automatically quit without any notice. This was especially frustrating when I realized I missed my subway stop while trying to make it to my friend's concert. When the phone is doing just one of these tasks, the A17 loads them up fast and even feels smooth.

It's a shame because the phone otherwise feels like a great value. It has access to nearly all the same apps and services found on more expensive Galaxy phones. I appreciated having Samsung's Now bar, with dynamic notifications showing how much time is left on timers and important boarding pass information for my flights. Samsung's Smart View lets me use Miracast to stream my phone's display to a Roku TV, while most Android phones lately only include Chromecast support. Plus Samsung's six-year promise of software and security updates is unmatched in this price range.

So while I do feel the Galaxy A17 is one of the best phones available for most people looking for a new device that's under $200, it's not an enthusiastic recommendation.

This phone could be great for someone who just wants a device that keeps things simple: Yes, you can make calls, send texts, take decent photos and stream videos from your favorite social media app for a low price. Just don't expect the Galaxy A17 to excel at tasks that require some app juggling.

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My Galaxy A17 navigation and music fix

I discovered a quick fix for when keeping multiple apps open puts too much strain on the phone, like when I used Google Maps and Apple Music at the same time. Open Settings: Search for Memory and you'll bring up a page that lets you list your most important background apps as Excluded apps. This tells the Galaxy A17 to stop policing how much memory these take up, as the phone is actively checking and turning off apps that you might not need in the background. And with a limited 4GB of memory, I hit this strain constantly. 

While Samsung does let you convert some of its onboard storage into an additional 4GB of memory, the Galaxy A17 simply does not have enough space to make multitasking easy. While it's not uncommon for phones in this price tier to struggle with complex tasks, it's frustrating to see the Galaxy A17 stumble in common multitasking processes such as navigation or listening to music. 

Samsung Galaxy A17 design, software, battery

The Samsung Galaxy A17 might not have the trendy vegan leather look of the Moto G, but the A17 does make plastic look as good as you can get. My review unit came in black, and there's also a blue option. The design mimics the newer Galaxy phones by assembling its rear cameras into a vertically aligned oval camera bar.

Along the front is the phone's nice and bright 6.7-inch display, which runs at a 1,080p resolution. For its affordable price, the phone's display is a highlight, and it runs smoothly at a 90Hz refresh rate. This made the phone particularly good for watching videos and browsing the web. While games looked good, the phone's limited memory and processing power got in the way of them working well.

The Galaxy A17 comes with 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage, which have become fairly standard for phones at the $200 price range. But what bugs me is that this configuration is the same as what the Galaxy A15 offered two years ago, and when I reviewed that phone I also felt like the device struggled with some tasks. While Samsung has a RAM Plus setting to virtually expand the memory by "borrowing" from main storage, the limited space quickly became apparent whenever I tried to use the phone for multiple tasks.

The Galaxy A17 uses Samsung's Exynos 1330 processor. In benchmark tests, it scored slightly lower than the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 powering the $180 Moto G Play that I recently tested. Even without the tests, it's clear that you need to take things easy with the Galaxy A17. The phone would often crawl when I used it for basic tasks: When I swipe down from the top of the screen to look at notifications, there's a noticeable delay between the swipe and the action on the screen. Playing music while texting sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. And sometimes when opening an app, I'd be greeted with a blank white screen while I waited for assets to load.

But when the phone works, I've been delighted by the way Samsung has been able to scale down its myriad of services to its $200 phone. Samsung Health, Samsung Wallet and Samsung's Weather app are fully functional and even colorful. While audio plays only from a single speaker, it gets quite loud when I put on my news podcasts in the living room. Samsung no longer provides a headphone jack for its under-$200 phone, which began with last year's A16, but it's easy enough to listen through a  Bluetooth-connected pair of wireless earbuds or a cast audio to a speaker. 

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The 5,000-mAh battery helps the phone last a little longer than a day of normal use. I typically ended a day with 30% to 40% of battery left. You'll probably want to charge the phone every day and luckily it's 25W wired charging speed filled the battery from 0% to 54% in 30 minutes. That's quite good for the price, and likely means you'll be able to charge the phone up while getting ready for the day.

In our 3-hour YouTube streaming battery test, the Galaxy A17 performs a hair better than Motorola's $160 Moto G Play. It depleted to 81% by the time I'd finished testing its 5,000-mAh battery. The Play has a slightly bigger 5,200-mAh battery, which dropped to 79% during testing.

Galaxy A17 cameras

The cameras on the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G perform fairly well for the phone's price. There's a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 5-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel macro for shooting close-up subjects. The photos I took at the pirate-themed Gasparilla Festival in Tampa, Florida managed to capture all the action without too much blurring. That said, the photos themselves aren't very detailed, showing the camera suite's limited capabilities.

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The overcast day helped make colors come out, however it's clear that the cameras don't have a wide dynamic range and aren't advanced enough to separate out dark hair from shadows. But for this price, that's acceptable, as I'm glad to see so little motion blur.

The cameras were challenged more when trying to zoom in. Images taken with the preset 2x zoom had an abundance of crushed shadows making dark colors and textures, like hair, appear to blend together.

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With a more stable subject under decent lighting, such as the chicken stir fry bowl I got at the parade, the images have a lot of detail when I didn't use the zoom.

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The phone's autofocus was on the chicken, rice and vegetables, but the grass behind it and the fallen beads on the ground blend together because the main lens' natural bokeh, which looks crunchy (instead of buttery smooth and dreamy).

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This ultrawide photo of the same subject fares better, with some loss of detail on the dish. The background looks clearer as the ultrawide lens keeps more of the image, the grass, beads and trash in focus.

Like many phones in this price range, you'll get the best results in environments with good lighting. In this photo from The Book Lounge in St. Petersburg, Florida, the bookshelves are on full display and the A17's cameras are able to depict the text of most of the book covers. It does struggle with a few: Skin in the Game by William Miller in the top-right is slightly out of focus, which is probably due to the lower quality of the main camera's optics.

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And in this 2x photo, the shelf appears softer because the A17 has to crop in since there's not a dedicated zoom lens. But the variety of the book colors still looks true to life.

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Selfie photos taken with the 13-megapixel front-facing camera get the job done, but they're not great. I'd share them with group chats, but probably wouldn't post them publicly. I took the selfie below in a well-lit Manhattan diner. The image has a lot of detail in my face: Note my skin texture and hair.

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Samsung Galaxy A17 5G: The bottom line

The Samsung Galaxy A17 5G's big selling point is its $200 price and access to many modern Galaxy features. This phone might even be offered for free with a carrier deal. When it comes to basic tasks, the Galaxy A17 is capable of doing most of them, including phone calls, texting, tapping into the subway using Samsung Wallet, web browsing and simple photography in well-lit environments. 

But if you find yourself multitasking, just know that the Galaxy A17 quickly becomes frustrating. 

If you need a cheaper phone, the Galaxy A17 is currently the choice I'd recommend most for its variety of features. Just be easy with it.

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET's reviews team was actually used in the real world. We test a phone's features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it's bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor's performance to the extremes using standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.

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