GSMArena Team, 18 August 2025

Samsung Galaxy A17 5G review

6. Alternatives, pros and cons, verdict

Potential alternatives

The new Samsung Galaxy A17 5G is one of your most affordable entries into the Samsung ecosystem, but it's hardly for everyone. Especially if you take a look at what the competition has to offer in the sub-$200/€200 category.

In the US, the Galaxy A17 5G is priced at $189 and is one of the most affordable new models you can get right now. Motorola has a bunch of counteroffers in the same price bracket, and the Moto G Stylus (2024) stands out despite the fact that it was released back in 2024. You can now find it for around $180, and despite being more than a year older, it has a more powerful chipset and offers considerably longer video and web battery runtimes per our tests. The Moto also leads in the camera, loudspeaker and charging speed departments. When you factor in the extra stylus functionality, it's clearly a no-brainer of a purchase decision in this price segment.

Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G (2024) • Nothing CMF Phone 1 • Motorola Moto G86 • Samsung Galaxy A26

The Galaxy A17 5G's market positioning in Europe isn't all that bad either. The handset is once again one of the most affordable smartphones with a price tag in the mid-€100.

However, if you are willing to spend just a tad more, you will be rewarded with higher-value devices such as the Moto G86, or even the Galaxy A26. There's also the CMF Phone 1, which even undercuts the A17 5G.

The Moto and CMF devices have a couple of things in common - more powerful SoCs, longer battery life, nicer displays and a tad faster charging. The G86 is also equipped with stereo loudspeakers, better ingress protection and its base storage capacity is 256GB.

Clearly, Moto G86 is a no-brainer here and it's negligibly more expensive. But in case a Samsung phone is a must, then maybe consider the Galaxy A26 as it's a higher-tier phone without asking you to spend too much over budget.

Verdict

The Galaxy A17 5G is meant to be a low-priced phone with a decent design and long software support from Samsung, but at its current pricing, it's far from competitive in its price bracket. You can easily find more powerful smarrtphones with longer battery life, faster charging and brighter displays with HDR support.

Perhaps the biggest issue we had with the Galaxy A17 5G is how laggy it is. It's important to note that this is our experience with the 4GB variant. It's possible that the 6GB version has it much better. The poor performance now also raises the question of how Samsung will be able to keep this phone up to date with newer software versions, which will likely be more demanding of the hardware.

Pros

Nice design, despite the low budget.
Overall decent main camera.
Great selfie quality.
Solid battery life for video streaming and gaming.
Entitled to 6 major OS updates.
microSD card slot.

Cons

No notable upgrades compared to the previous model.
Screen is basic - not very bright, and with no automatic refresh rate switching.
Subpar performance.
No stereo speakers.