Samsung’s A-series has long been the most sensible answer to the question of which mid-range Samsung phone to buy in India. These phones are reliable, well-supported, widely serviced and built to last. The Galaxy A57 continues that tradition in nearly every meaningful respect, arriving thinner and lighter than its predecessor, rated IP68 for the first time in this line and powered by the new Exynos 1680 chipset with a base configuration that now starts at 8 GB of LPDDR5X RAM. It ships with Android 16 out of the box with One UI 8.5 and Samsung’s promise of six major OS upgrades gives the A57 one of the strongest long-term software commitments in the segment. The camera hardware looks unchanged on paper: a 50 MP main sensor with OIS, a 12 MP ultrawide and a 5 MP macro, but the improved ISP (image signal processing) tells a more interesting story in real-world use.
All of that sounds like a compelling package and in many ways it is. The problem is the price tag. Launched at Rs 56,999 for the base 8 GB + 256 GB variant and Rs 62,499 for the 12 GB + 256 GB model, the A57 costs roughly Rs 15,000 more than the A56 did at launch and that gap demands justification. Whether the A57 earns it is exactly what this review sets out to find.
Pick up the A57 after the A56 and at 179 g and 6.9 mm thin, the A57 feels like a meaningfully different proposition in hand than the A56’s 198 g and 7.4 mm profile, which made it feel slightly blocky by comparison. Samsung has shaved off 19 g and half a millimetre of thickness while keeping the same 6.7-inch footprint and the result is a phone that balances well and sits comfortably in a single hand without feeling dense or unwieldy.
The build quality is excellent for the price. A layer of Gorilla Glass Victus+ covers both the front and the back, while the aluminium frame is solid and well-finished and the whole assembly feels premium without resorting to fussy materials or design gimmicks. The A57 is available in four colours: Navy, Grey, Icyblue and Lilac, all of them clean, grown-up finishes that age gracefully and don’t demand attention. There’s no aggressive texture pattern or loud colour science here.
The upgrade to IP68 dust and water resistance is a genuine improvement over the A56’s IP67. The A57 can handle immersion to 1.5 m for up to 30 minutes, which is a meaningful real-world upgrade for anyone who’s ever fumbled their phone near a sink or been caught in the rain. At this price, it’s the baseline you’d expect and Samsung delivers it.
The under-display optical fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate. The dual stereo speaker grilles are positioned sensibly. There’s no 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is expected at this point and the USB Type-C 2.0 port is functional but dated.
The Galaxy A57 features a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED+ panel running at 120Hz with a Full HD+ (2340 x 1080 resolution). The move from the A56’s standard Super AMOLED to Super AMOLED+ brings a measurably richer viewing experience, so you can expect deeper blacks, slightly more vibrant colours and a more consistent brightness profile across the panel.
In our testing, the A57 peaked at 2,020 nits, comfortably exceeding Samsung’s own claim of 1,900 nits, while the SDR content peaked at 730 nits. We conclude that it is a brighter panel and outdoor legibility in direct sunlight is significantly better than on the A56. The HDR10+ support means streaming content on Netflix and YouTube looks the way it was intended to and the OLED contrast gives movies and games a visual punch that LCD alternatives at this price simply cannot match.
The 120Hz adaptive refresh rate keeps scrolling and animations fluid and the Aqua Touch feature handles wet or sweaty finger inputs reliably. The touch latency is low and the screen responds accurately without any perceptible lag.
The one criticism worth raising here is the display resolution. While the A57’s display is perfectly sharp for everyday use, the text is crisp, images are clean, but at Rs 56,999, competitors in this segment are offering 1.5K panels. It’s not a dealbreaker in practical use, but it’s a visible gap on a spec sheet that Samsung should have addressed at this price point.
The Galaxy A57 is powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 1680, built on a 4 nm process and with an octa-core CPU where one prime core is clocked at 2.9 GHz, four performance cores at 2.6 GHz and three efficiency cores at 1.95 GHz, paired with the Xclipse 550 GPU. The base 8 GB LPDDR5X RAM configuration is a step up from the A56’s base 6 GB and storage uses UFS 3.1 across all variants.
Here’s how the A57 fared in our benchmark suite:
| Benchmark | Score |
| AnTuTu | 1,382,419 |
| Geekbench 6 (single-core) | 1,388 |
| Geekbench 6 (multi-core) | 4,441 |
| 3DMark Wildlife Extreme | 1,762 |
| PCMark Work | 14,712 |
| CPU throttling score | 81% |
The AnTuTu score of 1,382,419 puts the Exynos 1680 well clear of the Exynos 1580 and in competitive territory against other upper-mid-range chips. The 81% CPU throttle score is the more meaningful figure for real-world use as it tells you that the A57 sustains close to its peak output under extended load rather than collapsing into thermal throttling after a few minutes. That matters for sustained gaming sessions, long video recording runs and anything that demands consistent compute power over time.
In daily use, the phone is fast, fluid and consistent. App launches feel quick, multitasking between heavy applications is seamless and the UFS 3.1 storage keeps file transfers and installs snappy. For gaming, the Xclipse 550 handles popular titles like BGMI and COD Mobile at stable frame rates without alarming the thermals. It isn’t a chip that will impress serious gamers, but it delivers exactly what a mid-range daily driver should: predictable, drama-free performance.
Software is one of the A57’s strongest arguments. One UI 8.5 on Android 16 is one of the cleanest Android implementations available with fluid animations, sensible information architecture and a bloat level that’s lower than previous Samsung mid-range generations. Galaxy AI features like Circle to Search, Live Translate and Note Assist are functional rather than gimmicks. Samsung’s commitment to six major OS upgrades means the A57 will remain current software-wise well into the 2030s, which strengthens the long-term ownership story that few competitors can match at this price.
The Galaxy A57 has a 5,000 mAh battery, the same as A56 and charges at 45 W over a wired connection. There’s no wireless charging and no reverse charging support.
In our PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test, the A57 ran for 14 hours and 43 minutes, which is a solid result. In daily use, moderate users will comfortably reach the end of the day with some charge remaining and lighter users can realistically stretch to a day and a half. Heavy users, such as those combining navigation, extended camera sessions, social media and video streaming, will want to plug in by evening.
The charging speed is where Samsung’s conservatism costs the A57. A full charge from flat to 100% took approximately 1 hour in our testing, which is a perfectly acceptable result in isolation. But in a segment where competitors are now shipping with 65 W, 80 W and even 100 W fast charging as standard, 45 W feels like it belongs to an earlier generation. At Rs 56,999, anyone who buys this phone today has a right to expect more here.
On paper, the A57’s camera system is nearly identical to the Galaxy A56: a 50 MP f/1.8 main sensor with OIS (1/1.56″, 1.0 µm pixels, PDAF), a 12 MP f/2.2 ultrawide with a 123° field of view, and a 5 MP macro lens. The front camera is a 12 MP f/2.2 fixed-focus unit. The hardware hasn’t changed on paper, but the Exynos 1680’s improved image signal processor and Samsung’s refined computational photography pipeline make a tangible difference in output, primarily in daylight, where the A57 is a genuinely excellent performer.
Daylight and indoor performance
The main sensor is at its best when given light to work with and it makes full use of it. Samsung’s colour science is immediately recognisable with punchy, saturated and visually pleasing tones, even if it occasionally tips towards vibrancy. In brightly lit outdoor environments, the camera handles high-contrast scenes confidently, keeping highlights in check while properly exposing subjects in shadow. Dynamic range is one of the sensor’s clear strengths.
In the default 12.5 MP pixel-binned mode, detail and sharpness are excellent. Fine textures like small printed text, metallic surfaces and fabric weaves are all rendered clearly and with good edge definition. Shooting in the full 50 MP mode produces images that are slightly softer than the binned output but avoids the artificially over-sharpened look that some sensors apply. For those who intend to edit before sharing, the full-resolution files offer a clean canvas that responds well to post-processing.
White balance under mixed indoor lighting is handled gracefully. The camera reads warm ambient light accurately and renders a cosy atmosphere without skewing too far yellow. Skin tones in portrait shots are natural and flattering, and subject-tracking autofocus is reliable and fast.
Natural bokeh, zoom and portrait performance
The primary lens creates a smooth, natural background separation at close focusing distances and the roll-off from sharp foreground to defocused background has an optical quality to it rather than looking computationally generated. The focal plane is fairly narrow at close range, which requires some patience when shooting foreground subjects against a busy immediate background, but the results when you get the framing right are genuinely impressive for the segment.
Portrait mode handles edge detection nicely. It isn’t perfect on subjects with complex hair or translucent edges, but it avoids the worst artefacting and produces social-media-ready results consistently.
The main camera’s 2x digital crop is a highlight. It produces clean, detail-rich images that hold up to close inspection and, crucially, it performs significantly better than the dedicated 5 MP macro lens in close-up scenarios. For portraits and close-up photography, the 2x crop is the right mode in virtually every case.
Ultrawide
The 12 MP ultrawide is a solid performer in good light. Colours stay accurate, dynamic range is reliable and edge-to-edge sharpness is improved compared to older A-series generations. The 123° field of view is a genuinely wide capture angle that serves architecture, landscapes and group shots well. Fixed focus means it’s better suited to distant subjects than to anything in the immediate foreground.
After dark, the ultrawide’s usefulness drops sharply. Nighttime shots from this lens are soft, noticeably grainy and prone to colour temperature miscalculation. It’s a limitation shared across most phones in this segment, but it’s worth factoring into your expectations if ultrawide photography in low light is important to you.
Selfie Camera
The 12 MP front camera is one of the A57’s quieter highlights. In good light it captures excellent detail, wide dynamic range and vibrant colours. The fixed-focus lens performs best at a natural arm’s length and while it softens in dimmer rooms, the output remains highly usable. The addition of 4K at 30 fps video recording on the front camera is a practical benefit for content creators and video callers alike.
Low light and night mode performance
This is where the A57’s limitations become clearest. In urban environments with reasonable ambient light like illuminated signage, streetlights and lit shop windows, the main camera holds its ground. It exposes bright elements accurately and avoids blowing highlights. But the dynamic range narrows noticeably in darker areas: shadows accumulate noise quickly and fine detail in poorly lit foreground elements tends to get crushed.
In severely dark scenarios, standard mode struggles significantly. Noise levels are heavy and finer subject detail such as textures, labels and small objects, becomes indistinct. Switching to Night Mode offers only a marginal recovery. It lifts exposure slightly, recovers a little more of the scene’s brighter elements and manages colour noise modestly better. But the processing relies heavily on aggressive noise reduction, and the result is images that are technically brighter but visually soft and muddy.
The 5 MP macro lens is largely unnecessary. Its output quality is budget-tier, and the required shooting distance places the phone close enough to its subject that you’ll often shadow it before you’ve framed the shot. The main camera’s 2x digital crop outperforms it consistently and is the obvious choice for any close-up work.
The Samsung Galaxy A57 is a well-built, well-supported and well-designed phone that gets a great deal right. But the price is the conversation the A57 cannot escape. At Rs 56,999 for the base variant, Samsung is asking significantly more than the A56 ever commanded and the upgrades, while real, are uneven. The camera hardware is essentially unchanged. Charging remains at 45 W in a segment that has moved on to faster standards. The display stays at Full HD+ when 1.5K has become the benchmark for this price bracket. And the low-light camera performance, particularly through Night Mode, is not the step change this price demands.
For buyers upgrading from an A55 or older, the A57 is an easy recommendation because the cumulative improvements are significant and the long-term software commitment is compelling. For A56 owners, the case is much harder to make. And for anyone entering this segment fresh at around Rs 57,000, the competition is serious and informed. The A57 is a good phone, but we would advise buyers to be on the lookout for a price cut or discounts during sale season.