My Galaxy A17 review: Samsung’s $200 phone does it all…slowly

Samsung Galaxy A17 5G

Benefits

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

Disadvantages

• Multitasking can be difficult
• Obviously slow

Samsung’s $200 Galaxy A17 5G makes me grateful Android is so flexible. Indeed, during my three weeks using the more affordable Galaxy 2026 phone, I continued to run into roadblocks related to 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 close without notice. It was especially frustrating when I realized I had missed my subway station while trying to get to my friend’s concert. When the phone performs just one of these tasks, the A17 loads them quickly and is even smooth.

It’s a shame because the phone otherwise appears to be excellent value for money. It has access to almost all of the same apps and services found on more expensive Galaxy phones. I appreciated having Samsung’s Now Bar, with dynamic notifications showing time remaining on timers and important boarding pass information for my flights. Samsung’s Smart View lets me use Miracast to cast my phone’s screen to a Roku TV, whereas most Android phones lately only include Chromecast support. Plus, Samsung’s six-year promise of software updates and security is unmatched in this price range.

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

This phone might be ideal for someone who just wants a device that makes things simple: yes, you can make calls, send texts, take good photos, and stream videos from your favorite social media app for one low price. Don’t expect the Galaxy A17 to excel at tasks that require juggling apps.

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Fixing my Galaxy A17’s navigation and music

I discovered a quick solution 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 Memory and you will display a page that allows you to list your most important background apps like Excluded apps. This tells the Galaxy A17 to stop monitoring how much memory they take up, as the phone actively checks and disables apps you may not need in the background. And with limited memory of 4 GB, I’m constantly faced with this variety.

Although Samsung lets you convert some of its onboard storage into an additional 4GB of memory, the Galaxy A17 simply doesn’t have enough space to make multitasking easy. While it’s not uncommon for phones in this price range to struggle with complex tasks, it’s frustrating to see the Galaxy A17 stumble in common multitasking processes like browsing or listening to music.

Samsung Galaxy A17 design, software, battery

The Samsung Galaxy A17 may not have the trendy vegan leather look of the Moto G, but the A17 makes the plastic look as good as possible. My review unit comes in black and there is also a blue option. The design mimics the new Galaxy phones by assembling its rear cameras into a vertically aligned oval camera bar.

On the front is the phone’s nice and bright 6.7-inch display, which runs at 1080p resolution. For its affordable price, the phone’s display is a strong point and it performs well at a 90Hz refresh rate. This made the phone particularly suitable for watching videos and browsing the web. Even though the games looked good, the phone’s limited memory and processing power prevented them from running smoothly.

The Galaxy A17 comes with 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage, which has become pretty standard for phones in the $200 price range. But what bothers me is that this configuration is the same one that the Galaxy A15 offered two years ago, and when I reviewed that phone, I also got the impression that the device struggled with certain tasks. While Samsung has a RAM Plus setting to virtually expand memory by “borrowing” from the 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 performed slightly worse than the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 powering the $180 Moto G Play that I recently tested. Even without the tests, it is clear that we have to take it easy with the Galaxy A17. The phone often crawled when I was using it for basic tasks: when I swipe from the top of the screen to check notifications, there’s a noticeable delay between the swipe and the action on the screen. Playing music while texting sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes when opening an app, I’m greeted by a blank white screen while I wait for resources to load.

But when the phone works, I was pleased with how Samsung was able to reduce its myriad of services to its $200 phone. Samsung Health, Samsung Wallet and the Samsung Weather app are fully functional and even colorful. Although the sound only comes from a single speaker, it gets quite loud when I play my news podcasts in the living room. Samsung no longer offers a headphone jack for its sub-$200 phone, which started with last year’s A16, but it’s easy enough to listen through a pair of Bluetooth-connected wireless earbuds or stream audio to a speaker.

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

In our 3-hour YouTube streaming battery test, the Galaxy A17 performed slightly better than Motorola’s $160 Moto G Play. It was 81% drained by the time I finished testing its 5,000 mAh battery. The Play has a slightly larger 5,200mAh battery, which dropped to 79% in testing.

Galaxy A17 cameras

The cameras on the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G perform quite well for the price of the phone. There is a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 5-megapixel ultra-wide, 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 much blur. That said, the photos themselves aren’t very detailed, showing the limited capabilities of the camera suite.

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The overcast weather helped bring out the colors, but it’s clear that the cameras don’t have a wide dynamic range and aren’t advanced enough to separate dark hair from shadows. But for this price, it’s acceptable, as I’m happy to see so little motion blur.

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

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With a steadier subject in decent lighting, like the bowl of stir-fried chicken I purchased at the parade, the images had plenty 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 pearls on the ground blend together because of the natural bokeh from the main lens, which looks crisp (instead of smooth and dreamy).

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This ultra-wide photo of the same subject comes out better, with some loss of detail on the plate. The background appears clearer because the ultra-wide lens keeps more of the image, grass, beads, and trash in focus.

Like many phones in this price range, you’ll get the best results in well-lit environments. In this photo taken at the Book Lounge in St. Petersburg, Florida, the shelves are fully exposed and the A17’s cameras are capable of depicting the text on most book covers. He struggles with a few: William Miller’s Skin in the Game at top right is slightly blurry, 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 looks softer because the A17 has to crop since there’s no dedicated zoom lens. But the variety of colors in the book still looks true to life.

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

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Samsung Galaxy A17 5G: the essentials

The Samsung Galaxy A17 5G’s main selling point is its $200 price tag and access to many modern Galaxy features. This phone could even be offered for free with an agreement with an operator. When it comes to basic tasks, the Galaxy A17 is capable of performing most of them, including phone calls, texting, accessing 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 gets frustrating quickly.

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

How we test phones

Every phone tested by the CNET review team has actually been used in the real world. We test phone features, play games, and take photos. We examine the screen to see if it is bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and construction to see how it holds up and if it has an IP rating for water resistance. We push CPU performance to the extreme using standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, as well as our own anecdotal observations while navigating the interface, recording high-resolution video, and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All cameras are tested in various conditions, from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We test special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our results with similarly priced competing phones. We also check battery life by using it daily and performing a series of battery drain tests.

We consider additional features like 5G support, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and face sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds, and foldable displays, among others that may come in handy. We weigh all that against the price to give you a verdict on whether this phone, whatever its price, actually represents good value for money. Although this testing is not always reflected in CNET’s initial review, we perform follow-up and long-term testing in most cases.