Samsung Galaxy A57 Review

Samsung's A-series has spent several generations standing still. The Galaxy A57 finally moves: it is thinner, lighter, better built and better connected than the phone it replaces. What it does not do is answer the competition on the two things upper mid-range buyers scrutinise most closely — camera quality and sustained performance.

This is where the effort has gone, and it shows immediately. Despite a 6.7in display the A57 weighs 179 g, which is genuinely light for its size, and the weight is well distributed. Thickness drops to 6.9 mm from 7.4 mm on the previous generation. Neither figure sounds dramatic in isolation, but placed next to rivals the difference is obvious.

The rest is conventional: a glossy glass back that picks up fingerprints, a pill-shaped camera housing, blued metal edges and a flat screen. The more meaningful change is around the display, where the black borders have been cut substantially. Screen-to-body ratio rises from 88.1 per cent to close to 90 per cent, and the gain in immersion is far greater than two percentage points suggests.

Durability is well covered. The A57 carries IP68 certification, allowing immersion in fresh water to 6 m for 30 minutes, with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ front and back. The in-display fingerprint sensor is set too low, forcing you to stretch your thumb to reach it.

The panel is a 6.7in OLED in a 19.5:9 ratio, refreshing at 120 Hz — though it cannot drop below 60 Hz, so there is no low-power idle state.

Samsung claims a 1,900-nit peak in boost mode. Measurement came close at 1,809 cd/m², which is a good figure without approaching the leaders: a Google Pixel 10a reaches 2,914 cd/m² and a Xiaomi Poco F8 Pro 3,461 cd/m². HDR peak fares better at 1,748 cd/m², much nearer the Pixel 10a's 2,024 cd/m².

Colour accuracy out of the box is the real problem. The phone ships in Vivid mode, whose white balance runs slightly cool at 6,744 K against the 6,500 K standard, with unsatisfying delta E 2000 figures — 2.4 in sRGB, which is what most web content uses, and 2.8 in P3. Lower is better.

Samsung provides a colour temperature slider, but it has too few steps: moving one notch warmer overshoots straight past the standard to 6,237 K, without meaningfully improving accuracy.

The fix is to switch to the Natural profile, which favours sRGB and brings delta E down to a far more respectable 1.5. P3 remains at 2.8 and white balance falls to 6,272 K, and the slider is disabled in this mode. It is worth doing as soon as you take the phone out of the box.

The A57 ships with One UI 8.5 on Android 16, and Samsung guarantees six full years of major and security updates — increasingly common, but still valuable and a genuine part of the value case here.

Generative AI is now built into the system through tools such as the Now Bar and Gemini, which can interact with your apps. The Now Bar is not natively integrated, which is a shame. These additions do automate small tasks and offer contextual suggestions, though their usefulness depends heavily on using Samsung's keyboard, which behaves quite differently from Gboard. One UI 8.5 itself remains clear and pleasant, with plentiful and accessible customisation.

The camera configuration is modest, and there is no telephoto lens:

• Wide: 50 MP, 1/1.56in sensor, 1.0µm, f/1.8, PDAF, OIS
• Ultra-wide: 12 MP, 1/3.06in, 1.12µm, f/2.2, 123°
• Macro: 5 MP, f/2.4
• Selfie: 12 MP, 1/3.2in, 1.12µm, f/2.2

Video records at 4K30 and 1080p at 30 or 60 fps, all in HDR, with the selfie camera matching that and adding 10-bit HDR.

In reasonable daylight the main sensor is competent but struggles in several respects. Sharpness is not exceptional: fine grooves in a surface photographed close up look flat and lacking relief, and detail is lost across busy areas — foliage, ground textures, walls, the small architectural details that give an image life. Colour is undersaturated too, visible in flat reds, skies and vegetation, where competing phones handled the same conditions better.

The ultra-wide loses quality as expected, introducing noise, shedding detail and distorting toward the edges. In its favour, its colour is well matched to the main sensor, so shots remain clean and usable.

Digital zoom benefits from the 50 MP sensor. At 2x equivalent the results hold up well, with detail surviving and no moiré on difficult subjects such as blue roof tiles, though noise rises as the phone uses fewer pixels and pushes ISO. At 4x quality falls and colours wash out — usable in a pinch. At the 10x the phone offers, image quality degrades badly, though that is true of anything at this price.

Selfies are decent, avoiding the reddish cast some phones apply, and accurate if a little desaturated. Night photography is where the lack of flagship-grade computational processing shows: night mode does what it can, but detail is simply missing.

The A57 runs an Exynos 1680 with 8 GB of RAM. Day-to-day fluidity is good, with occasional slowdowns and loading pauses that never become genuinely frustrating, and games run acceptably.

In AnTuTu 11 the chip holds its own against its main rivals, the Tensor G4 and Snapdragon 7 Gen 4. In Geekbench 6 the Tensor G4's higher-tier status shows, but the Exynos 1680 performs very well against the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4.

Graphics are the weak point, and specifically sustained graphics. In the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme stress test the A57 peaked at 44°C, running considerably hotter than its competitors while delivering lower performance. The chip is capable; it simply should not be pushed hard graphically for long periods.

Networking is genuinely strong this year, covering Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 6.0 and eSIM — a complete set at this level. The battery is 5,000 mAh, giving reasonable endurance with fast charging.

In the UK the Galaxy A57 is listed on Amazon UK and is in stock at the time of writing, in Violet. Amazon UK offers 256GB and 512GB variants; there is no 128GB option in this market, so 256GB is the UK entry point. Other colours listed are Dark Blue, Gray and Light Blue.

The Galaxy A57 is a real step forward in the ways Samsung most needed one. It is thin, light and well finished, IP68 and Gorilla Glass Victus+ make it durable, the networking is complete, and six years of updates give it a long, useful life.

But it lands in the most crowded part of the market, where every compromise is easy to spot. The default screen calibration is poor until you change it, there is no telephoto, camera output is merely acceptable and undersaturated, night photography is weak, and the phone runs notably hot under sustained graphical load.

It faces alternatives that answer those criticisms more convincingly. It is a competent phone that has improved in the right places — but not one that stands out in its class.