Budget phones have been getting really good over the last few years with the
Nothing Phone A series, the CMF phone line, even the Pixel A series has really
gotten quite good at very accessible prices. So, Samsung can't rest on their
laurels anymore. We are taking a look at the A17 5G. That's right, we're still
putting 5G at the end of phone names to make it seem more sophisticated. In the
box here, we have our SIM popper, manual, and a USB-C to C cable. That's
about 3 and 1/2 ft long. Wow, this is a
cable, all right. And other than that,
we got nothing. No plastic case included or anything like that. Just a cable, a
small booklet, and the phone itself. And right away, I got to say, I like that
they're not using plastic, they're using this like papery material. Honestly, I
really like it. This feels nice. I'm just going to take it out of the bag. And here we have it. It is a 6.7-in
screen. This thing is massive. I don't know what the deal with budget phones
being so big is. It feels like that's that's a trend. Are big screens cheaper?
Like, I I genuinely don't know. But, this thing is massive and it is
fingerprinty. My god, I just took this out. I do have gamer fingers, but I
don't think they're that bad. Okay, well, they are that bad, but it is just so fingerprinty. I'd say go for a white
model, but it only comes in this black as well as a light blue. Maybe the light
blue will fare a little bit better. Or, I guess maybe you're just not as like
nervous as I am because I don't know, maybe I'm a little shy. Don't worry
about it. On the back here, we have our triple camera system. We have a 5-megapixel ultra-wide, a 50-megapixel
main camera, and a 2-megapixel macro
camera. I doubt that these two cameras are going to look very good, but we'll
take a look. Maybe I'll be surprised. You know, back in the day, 5 megapixels was plenty. And in the big 2026, we're
going retro with it. Also, on the back, we have our flash and just the the
little Samsung logo. On the right side of the phone, we have our power button/fingerprint scanner and volume
rocker. On the top, we have our microphone. On the left side, we have
our SIM tray. Let's open it up. You know, budget phones sometimes have SD
card slots and maybe this one does as well. Oh, it does. Look at that. So, we
have an SD card slot as well as a nano SIM. And we can also see the rubber here
for water resistance cuz it is IP54.
And on the bottom we have a microphone, USB 2, as well as a speaker port. You
know, for phone design it it's a phone. I think the back looks quite nice
actually and I don't mind the feel of the plastic on the sides. The front looks a little dated with the bigger
chin which on the screen see if it's that noticeable, but but I find this kind of gap in the front to be a little
dated. I don't know, it just doesn't look super nice. But, for you know, the
couple hundred dollars you're spending it's not too bad. Well, the last thing for us to do is to turn it on, but not
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know, typically right after I turn on the phone I want to talk about the screen, but first thing I notice is
performance is pretty slow. And I know the phone's just waking up, but it took
a second to boot up, then it took a while for the clock to show up, and then just swiping around it feels a little
slow. Samsung flexes the 2.4 GHz
octa-core processor on the website, but when you actually look into it the Exynos 1330 that's powering the device
released in early 2023, which for a phone releasing in current year is a
little dated and it feels like it. We had Labs take a look at the performance
of the device and surprise surprise, it didn't perform great. The Exynos 1330
paired with the four [music] gigs of RAM, that's right, four gigs of RAM in
this phone performed pretty poorly when compared to the CMF Phone Pro 2 as well
as the Pixel 9A. We're talking 40-ish
percent of the CMF Phone 2 Pro's performance, as well as only 18% of the
Pixel 9A's performance in our stress test. >> [music] >> In our regular benchmarks, it did
better, getting nearly the same performance as the CMF Phone in single
core, and 70% of the CMF Phone's multi-core performance, but again, gets
absolutely demolished by the Pixel 9A. Sure, those phones are a little bit more
expensive, but when you're hopefully getting a device that's going to last a while, you want it to work well in that
time. Anyways, back to the screen. This is a 1080 by 2340 screen, so full HD
plus, and yeah, it looks fine. It's a fine amount
of brightness, it's a fine amount of detail. Even though it's a big screen,
so you're not going to get the highest amount of detail when you get up close to it, I think it looks perfectly
adequate. Wow, look at that full HD plus
adequateness. It is an AMOLED though, so that's nice. Again, feels pretty
standard for a phone these days. It'd be odd if it wasn't, especially from Samsung, but yeah, it looks good. It
also has Gorilla Glass Victus on it, so if you drop it face first, it should be
okay. Please tell me it's okay. Please tell me it's okay.
One thing to note [music] is that it's not an HDR screen. So, if you're trying to watch Oppenheimer the way Christopher
Nolan intended on a phone, you're not going to find the best experience here.
But, it does get up to 1,150 nits, which is pretty darn bright. It
also runs up to 90 Hz, so if you're, you know, trying to game at a high refresh
rate on this old processor, you can dream of 90 Hz. Though, I'm not even
getting it when scrolling around and anything, so >> [music] >> again, your your mileage may vary. But,
how does it sound? We see the speaker port on the bottom. Maybe it's going to really blow us away, and you can bring
this to your next party.
I hate to say it. For those who were excited, it is only out of this bottom
speaker, and it doesn't sound good. So, my right ear was pretty disappointed
with what I was hearing. Really just >> [music] >> awful showing out, honestly. Does not
sound good at at It's not even particularly loud.
Mhm. Hey, maybe the camera is excellent though, you know, 5 megapixels used to
be really impressive and maybe it will be here, too. We do have a 50 though.
Wow, it couldn't even hold the app open. I just went to the camera for 2 seconds
and the a YouTube app closed. 4 gigs of RAM is crazy. I know we're in
a crisis. It feels weird to use the word crisis when it's about the ability to
buy something for your computer, but 4 gigs of RAM in 2026 is insane.
I can't keep the YouTube app open and open the camera for 2 seconds and go
back to the YouTube app, something is wrong with your phone. Why would you Why
would you sell this? That's crazy. Anyways, anyways, anyways.
The camera. 50 megapixels sounds like a lot, so maybe it's good. Let's take a
picture. They have built-in Snapchat filter. I should screen record.
Does this phone not have the ability to screen record? That'd be crazy, right?
I tried to screen record, uh, but there's no option and I'm wondering if
it's cuz there's not enough RAM to screen record and do other things since
I can't open the camera while YouTube is open.
That's crazy. But, look at this angle. We have Snapchat filters built into the
phone, finally. I've not wanted to use Snapchat since
2016, but, uh, I guess I can without an account now, which is nice. This is
awful. This is truly awful. Taking a photo without the filters
though, honestly, that's a that's a decent front camera. It feels like the appropriate amount of sharpness. My
beard looks a little crispy, but like otherwise, not bad at all. And it has
the ability to get just the tiniest bit wider. If you just need a little teeny
bit more room. All right, let's try the main cameras. Here's our
1x, our
ultra wide, and you can zoom up to 10x digital zoom
though. It's not It's not optical. What is nice though, I'll give it some credit, the main camera has optical
image stabilization, which is great for low light or recording videos. Let's
take a look at the photos. You know what? In the top down, it It look bad. In the top down when you actually look
at the photo, he looks a little bit like a painting, but actually there's no
butt. That That's not great. If it's 50 megapixels, it should look, in theory, [music]
better than that. Uh let's take a look at other photos. You know what? If you
don't zoom in, this ultra photo is not bad. You do get fish eye, uh some some
distortion on the edges of the photo, but it doesn't look bad quality-wise.
You When you zoom in, yeah, again, it's not the sharpest and and there's a
little bit of chromatic aberration around the lights, but this is a cool-looking photo. And for our main
photo, again, perfectly adequate. It's
not good, it's not bad, it's totally fine. If you don't zoom in, I'd be
totally fine with this photo and the the level of detail it has. Let's put this into 50 megapixel mode. Maybe that'll
make a huge difference. I do have to say though, I don't know if you'll be able to see on camera cuz I can't screen
record. The preview does not look good. I'm surprised that the photos are
turning out as well as they do considering the preview it does not look
fantastic. Like, I don't know. Maybe I Maybe I'm just picky. Okay, throwing
into 50 megapixel mode, it does look a bit better. Look at it. You can see the wrinkles in Reese's face. Again, this is
actually not a bad camera. I I went over with pretty low expectations, but this
is totally fine. For recording, we get uh just a couple options. You can do
full HD or HD, and you can only shoot at 30 FPS in either mode. So, this probably
isn't going to look amazing, but let's take a video and see. Uh this is a video. I'm talking. I'm moving the
camera a bit. I'm I'm jostling.
Not the name, I'm just jostling. And there's Reese. Hey, I'm going to try
zooming in. How does it sound? You know what? The video, again, zooming in, it doesn't
look doesn't look that bad. It takes a second to like stop fizzling, but not bad.
Oh, and there's the switch to 0.5.
Not bad. Jelly, but not not too bad. Again, I'm
actually pretty impressed by the video. The optical image stabilization works
quite well, and even going to the 0.5, it did stutter a bit going back and
forth. In fact, it skipped something I was saying just very briefly, but that's
that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Other than that, the specs are not
anything to write home about. It's got Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.3, uh it charges at
25 W in that USB 2 port, and there's no wireless charging. So, I'm kind of just
left wondering, who is this for? Cuz at $200,
there's a lot of competition. I'm a believer in just buying an old flagship.
Like, you can probably get an S23 FE for around this price. Uh the CMF Phone is
only 70 bucks more. The Pixel A is, you know, 100 and some odd bucks more, which
is a bit of a jump. This does come with 6 years of security updates and 6 years
of major OS updates, which is nice. So, maybe this would be great for uh parent
or grandparent, you know, throw it into uh easy mode. I mean, look at this. My
grandma wouldn't be afraid of this. This is so approachable and friendly. But,
again, it just seems like Samsung is kind of fallen asleep at the wheel, as
there's so many phones coming out. There are so many great phones that have come
out that are still great. At $200, 4
gigs of RAM is just kind of embarrassing. No HDR kind of puts off
the people who really want to watch media on this. The gaming performance,
don't play games on this unless it's cribbage or backgammon.
I've been a big fan of budget Samsungs in the past, but this one seems a bit
like a miss. But, what do you think? Does this design entice you enough to
look past its RAM woes? Let us know down below. Get subscribed, and go have a big
old glass of water on me.