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.
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.
The lavender edition of the Galaxy A37 is easily my favorite color of the bunch.
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 $550 Samsung Galaxy A57 comes in a metal body and a navy color.
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 Samsung Galaxy A57 includes the Best Face feature for fixing photos where someone is blinking.
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.
The Galaxy A37 and A57 will be on sale April 9.
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.
@cnetdotcom Samsung’s latest more affordable phones are here but do come at a higher price than their predecessors by $50. Here’s how the two new phones look side by side 📲 #galaxya57 #galaxya37 #samsung #samsunggalaxy #budgetphones ♬ original sound - Brandi Cyrus