If you've never owned a smartphone before, the Galaxy A57 is an excellent choice... provided you don't notice that you can get slightly better specs for slightly less money. Everything about this smartphone lives up to its price, but if you've been part of Samsung's family for a while, you'll be extremely familiar with this one's previously released clone brother(s).
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Design
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Display
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Performance
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Battery
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Camera
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Value
Let’s start with something blunt. If you previously bought Samsung’s Galaxy A56, you are not the target market for the Galaxy A57. Even owners of the Galaxy A55 are only getting a marginal upgrade (and a smaller front-facing camera). Exactly who this year’s mid-ranger is for is… a question we’re really struggling to answer.
That said, if you’re coming from somewhere that doesn’t cover one of these phones, the South Korean company is fielding decent hardware. Whether it’ll justify the R12,000 price point when you can grab Motorola’s Edge 70 for R10k, though…
Twinsies
Stick the Galaxy A57 and A56 side by side, and you’ll struggle to tell them apart. Samsung has shaved about 0.5mm off each of the phone’s dimensions for this year’s release, but that’s not much of a selling point. Otherwise? It’s basically the same phone. The camera island is identical (more on that later), and Samsung’s tried-and-tested design language is present. Just like it was last year.
It’s still a solid design. The phone feels delightfully close to premium with its glass back and metal frame. The South Korean company uses Gorilla Glass Victus+, and it should prove tough enough. We’d still cram this one into a case as soon as possible. The rear is awfully slippery.
Buttons, ports, and the SIM tray are where you’d expect them to be (upper right and bottom row, respectively). As with the rest of the phone, there are no surprises here.
More twinsies?
Pry this year’s mid-ranger apart and stick it next to last year’s model, and you’ll have a similar problem. The Galaxy A56 and Galaxy A57 are, apart from the processor upgrade, pretty much identical phones. That’s not a vague assessment, either. They sport the same 6.7in AMOLED 1,080 x 2,340 displays. The same brightness (1,900 nits), the same 120Hz and HDR10+ support. And this carries through to the rest of the phone.
There are identical batteries (5,000mAh) and charging specs (45W, wired). The build materials are the same. There’s a slight uptick in the RAM/storage category, but since you can only officially buy the 8GB/256GB variant here in SA, the change is immaterial. Oh, and the waterproof rating has scaled up from IP67 to IP68 this year.
The only other upgrade, and it’s debatable whether you’d notice it, is that Samsung’s Exynos 1680 has replaced the 1580. It’ll offer a speed increase over the Galaxy A56, sure, but it’s incremental enough that you’re not gaining anything by replacing last year’s phone with this one.
Triplets?
If you thought that we were done pointing out that we’ve seen all this before, think again. Samsung’s camera island looks identical to the previous device, which is appropriate. The cameras inside that island are also unchanged. Expect the same 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide, and 5MP macro lenses seen in the Galaxy A56 (and A55) in Samsung’s Galaxy A57. That means the same performance, scooted up a little by software improvements over last year’s phone.
Which, again, isn’t a reason to upgrade from your older hardware. It also makes it an unlikely upgrade for anyone else who bought a recent entry in the series. Samsung’s pricing for this handset (yes, even in 2026) is a shade too high for what you’re getting. A spot of poking around will net you a near-identical phone for almost R4,000 less.
Samsung Galaxy A57 verdict
The weird thing is that Samsung hasn’t made any mistakes here. The A57 is still a near-premium looking-and-feeling smartphone. If you’d never bought a smartphone before, this will be an excellent jumping-on point. Everything works, and works well. But it’s just too similar to what came before to be that attractive an option.
Are you going to be miffed that you bought one? Maybe, when you see that you could have the same or better performance for less money. But if you’re not casting your eyes at places where the grass might be greener, the Galaxy A57 isn’t going to disappoint you. It sports Samsung’s usual excellence, appropriate to its price point. But it’s also a near carbon copy of last year’s model. Rather buy one of those.
