Galaxy A01 is a $100 phone that fulfills the basics

If you only have $100 to $150 to spend on a phone, you need something that covers all the bases. Fortunately, the cheapest member of Samsung's A-series of budget phones, known as the Galaxy A01, can do that.

Read CNET's Galaxy A01 review.  

The Galaxy A01 has a 5.7-inch display with a 720p resolution. That's not so bad, but keep in mind many YouTube videos can be viewed in a sharper 1080p resolution. Overall, videos look fine, but the LCD screen isn't as vibrant and rich as, say, the Galaxy A51's OLED display.  

The phone is thin and small enough to navigate comfortably with one hand. While its bottom bezel is a bit thick, the teardrop notch up top keeps the phone looking modern. There's also a headphone jack, which is great for wired headphone users.

The Galaxy A01 has a 13-megapixel standard lens and a 2-megapixel depth-sensing camera. The Galaxy A01 has a 13-megapixel standard lens and a 2-megapixel depth-sensing camera.  

On the front is a 5-megapixel teardrop notch camera.

As for video, the camera can record 1080p video but doesn't have optical image stabilization so footage won't be super smooth if you're moving around.  

The phone only has 16GB of internal storage and 2GB of RAM, and nearly half of that is taken up by the OS and apps. My review unit came from Verizon and it had so many preloaded apps that when I first turned it on, it only had about 5GB available. The phone does have expandable memory up to 512GB, so I recommend that route for onboard storage.

Equipped with a Snapdragon 439 processor, the A01 operates quickly enough for the most part and quitting apps and launching the camera felt timely. But every so often I noticed that the A01 took a beat or two to do some other things, like opening Geekbench 4.   

Powered by a 3,000-mAh battery, the phone can last all through the work day with mild usage. During tests for continuous video playback on Airplane mode, the phone averaged 11 hours and 47 minutes. 

All in all, the Galaxy A01's bare-bones hardware and features -- like its plain design and low-resolution display-- aren't much to get excited about. But the handset covers the basics well enough that, for its low price, it's a satisfactory device to snap photos, check email, watch videos and, of course, make calls.

Read CNET's Galaxy A01 review.