The timing of the Samsung Galaxy A37 launch couldn’t have been more peculiar. For all we know, the Galaxy A3x devices have usually launched in the ballpark of around Rs 35,000. All of a sudden, in 2026, the top variant of the new A37 is priced at over Rs 50,000. You read that right. The Galaxy A37 5G price in India starts at Rs 41,999 for the base 8GB RAM + 128GB storage, while the 8GB + 256GB option costs Rs 47,499. The top-end 12GB RAM + 256GB storage is priced in India at Rs 52,999. But, all of this isn’t simply a price hike; there’s more to it. Let me explain.
If you have been living under a rock, the prices of components have significantly risen because of the growing demand in AI. Processors, memory chips and the likes, cost a lot more in 2026, compared to last year. In fact, by the end of 2025, when news started coming that phone prices would be going up, I remember reading about what Xiaomi Group President, Lu Weibing, had to say. In his official statement from November 2025, he clearly warned that all phones would get expensive in 2026. Following this, when phones started releasing earlier this year, I also remember the Realme 16 Pro (currently priced starting at Rs 35,999) being called out for being overpriced. What followed was a flurry of devices that have been released in 2026 up until now, all of them attached with a good enough price hike that you just can’t ignore. None has been spared.
Which brings us back to the Galaxy A37. Yes, the prices have increased, but we also have to understand that, sadly, this is the new normal. Unless and until the component pricing situation is sorted, the prices will keep on going up. For instance, the phones, which used to cost around Rs 10,000, are suddenly priced at around Rs 15,000-16,000. The ones costing around Rs 30,000 now cost around Rs 40,000 and so on.
Yes, phone brands could also take a hit on their profits so that the consumer doesn’t have to bear the brunt of it. But that’s a conversation for another day.
Also read: Samsung Galaxy A57 in Digit Test Labs: Slimmer, smarter, but is it enough
For now, with the price hike situation out of the way, if you have a budget of around Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000, and if you are planning to get the Galaxy A37, what exactly makes it special? There are quite a lot of things that I like about this phone, and some I don’t. Here’s my full review.
To straight away answer the question in the subhead, the in-hand feel is quite good. As I mentioned in my first impressions of the Galaxy A37 (read it here), I am quite impressed with the phone’s ergonomics and how it looks.
The design unification strategy is seen in full swing here. The Galaxy A37 got the looks of the flagship S26 series, but you can get this one at a relatively affordable price. I absolutely love the lavender purple finish here. I think the black colour is also quite cool. Unlike the flagship S series, which has a matte rear panel, the Galaxy A37 features a mirror-like glossy rear finish. The purple version, since it’s a light colour, does a very good job of hiding the smudges. I am not so sure about the black colour, though. You’ll have to slap a case on it.
The button placement is just where I want it, and they have good tactile feedback. The optical fingerprint sensor has the perfect placement. Of course, I would’ve loved it if it could be placed slightly above, as Samsung places its ultrasonic fingerprint readers in the S series phones. But this still works. Also, the haptics are pretty nice and crisp.
And, partly the reason why my experience is positive with this phone also lies in the fact that I am coming from the Galaxy A35. That changes it all. Because, while an A36 user may not be able to see a big difference here, folks who have older models will definitely appreciate the attention to detail. For instance, something I also mentioned in my first impressions (second shameless plug), the Galaxy A37 is quite slim, which totally adds to how the phone sits in the hand. The edges around the corners are soft. The glass back (protected by Gorilla Glass Victus+) adds to the premiumness. I also didn’t miss the metal rails here. Of course, that would’ve been a plus, but the polycarbonate frame is what I feel also helps in keeping the weight in check. At the same time, it feels dense, so definitely a good quality frame we are looking at here.
Overall, design-wise, there are no complaints. The Galaxy A37 looks good, the choice of materials is great, and the button placement also works. The dust and water resistance is also bumped to IP68.
Now, only if the chin at the bottom bezel were also uniform as the rest of the front profile, that would’ve sealed the deal. Which brings my attention to…
One area where Samsung always excels is in the display and the overall multimedia experience. On the Galaxy A37, we are looking at this gorgeous 6.7-inch Full HD+ panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection. And this is the kind of screen that doesn’t brag about having a crazy 5,000 nits brightness or some other fancy tech, which only sounds good in name. Instead, it simply delivers.
Is it sharp? Yes. Does it offer good colour and contrast? Well, the natural and vivid screen modes are calibrated for 100 per cent sRGB and DCI-P3 colour spaces, respectively. My point is, colours look fantastic on this panel, and by the way, you get all the extra goodies such as eye comfort and vision booster.
Also, when it comes to the brightness, I am not going to talk about the peak numbers. We all know, brands can always brag about having 4,000 nits, 5,000 nits, 6,000 nits and so on as peak brightness, but that’s only for a very small window of the screen or even just a pixel. In fact, I don’t even know what the peak brightness of the Galaxy A37 is or if Samsung even tells us that. What I know is that I tested the phone’s display in the Digit Test Labs, and it reached a solid 1,937 nits of HDR brightness. Yes, there’s support for HDR10+ as well, just in case you thought otherwise.
Basically, the Galaxy A37 offers a brilliant display experience. You’ll love it if you enjoy watching content on your phone. For that matter, the stereo speakers are also very solid and get quite loud without sounding shrill.
Without beating around the bush, the Galaxy A37 performs reasonably well in day to day usage. But you also need to ask yourselves, what’s the definition of a solid performance? Because, let’s clear this out, this is a mass market device. While you do get devices in this price segment that offer stronger hardware, the question remains: which phone is the end consumer actually buying?
In recent years, the Galaxy A3x and A5x phones have generated good interest, and I say this in terms of actual sales numbers too. The primary reason for this is the reliability and the familiarity that come with a Galaxy smartphone.
In the case of the Galaxy A37, it is powered by the 4nm Exynos 1480 chip, paired with up to 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. I would’ve loved to see UFS 4.0 storage here, but UFS 3.1 is also good enough, and with the LPDDR5X RAM combined, the speed and responsiveness, especially coming from the A35 or even the A36, is pretty noticeable. In my personal experience, I’ve never experienced an A3x phone being this fast and responsive.
In day-to-day use, app opening times, along with app switching, are fast. Animations and transitions are fluid and snappy. Basically, you just feel the smoothness whenever you’re interacting with the screen, hitting a menu, scrolling in the browser and so on.
There’s One UI 8.5 atop Android 16 here, with a promise of 6 years of software updates (main OS + security patches). It’s a familiar user experience for me, especially when my main phone is a Galaxy S26 Ultra. Of course, when I say a familiar user experience, it doesn’t mean all the features from the S26 series are present here. Think about it like this: the Galaxy A37 brings a lot of those essential features over from its flagship S26 siblings, especially when it comes to how the software looks and feels.
For instance, I use a lot of AI Select on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. For those who don’t know this feature, you can imagine it as Circle to Search (which is also here, by the way), but on steroids. Or the voice transcription feature in the recorder app. You don’t know how handy it becomes to record interviews and not rely on third-party apps for transcriptions. The Galaxy A37 does it for free. Then, there’s the new and improved Bixby, which understands natural language. And I know, it can’t match the finesse of a Gemini or ChatGPT, but it is not intended to. For on-device stuff like looking for a setting, or changing the alarm, or putting a reminder, the general stuff, Bixby now does it better and faster, by just giving a simple voice command. It’s quite convenient.
As for the gaming prowess, the AMD Xclipse 530 GPU offers decent mid-range gaming performance. I won’t call it the best in the segment; if you want that, you buy one of the Chinese gaming-focused phones. But, for its target consumer, who would mostly want their phone for casual gaming, the Galaxy A37 would suffice. In my testing, the Galaxy A37 was able to run games such as Asphalt: Legends, BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile, at 60 fps, with minimal frame drops during long sessions. Do note that the GPU is capable of 90 fps gaming too, but that totally depends on the game updates and developer optimisation.
The Galaxy A37 sticks with a triple-rear camera system: a 50MP primary sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide, and a 5MP macro snapper. For selfies, you get a 12MP front-facing camera. On the video front, both the front and rear setups support up to 4K at 30 fps.
On paper, this is essentially the same hardware we saw on last year’s Galaxy A36. However, the real magic happens behind the scenes with the improved ISP, thanks to that Exynos 1480 chip. Because of that extra brainpower, I found the performance from the main and selfie cameras to be quite reliable.
In good light, you really can’t complain. I found that the camera consistently nails it when it comes to preserving fine details and punchy colours. The dynamic range is also spot on; even when I was shooting directly against the sun, the sensor did a fine job of lifting the shadows so the darker areas didn’t just turn into a black blob.
I’m also happy with how it handles people. Skin tones look natural and accurate, though I did notice the edge detection in portrait mode can sometimes be a bit aggressive with the sharpness. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s there if you look closely.
Low-light performance is surprisingly decent, too. I’m mostly talking about the main sensor here, but I love how it keeps things looking natural rather than over-processing the night into day.
That said, the ultra-wide camera is just ‘okay’. The plus side is that the colour science almost matches the main lens, as in you won’t see a jarring shift in tones when you zoom out. It gets the job done in good light, but once the sun goes down, the images definitely start to look a bit soft.
As for the selfie camera, it’s a solid performer. My facial textures stayed intact without that weird, oversharpened ‘digital’ look, and skin tones remained true to life.
I think with the battery capacity in phones, Samsung phones have hit a ceiling. The Galaxy A37 comes with a 5,000mAh unit under the hood, paired with 45W charging. First things first, this battery, paired with the optimisation that comes with the Exynos 1480 chip, makes it an easy one-day phone. And I am sure you may question, why doesn’t Samsung go with a higher capacity silicon-carbon battery like its competitors? For starters, the silicon-carbon tech is still in the nascent stage, and its long-term durability is still somewhat of a question. Instead, something that I also mentioned in my review of the Galaxy S26 Ultra is that Samsung’s lithium-ion solution is a proven one. We know it’ll hold up for three or four years without a massive drop-off.
Of course, as I just mentioned, this is easily a one-day phone. And that’s what really matters. Once fully charged in the morning, it can easily give you great mileage throughout the day without battery anxiety. Also, with 45W wired charging, it takes a little over an hour for the phone to fully charge, 67 minutes to be precise (as tested). But, even if you charge your phone for about 30 minutes, that too replenishes the tank from 0 to about 65 per cent, which is more than enough to last you a full work day.
Look, there is no getting around the fact that this is a massive price jump for an A3x device. But once you actually hold the thing, all of it starts making sense. For starters, the Galaxy A37 shares enough DNA with the S26 series that it doesn’t feel like an ‘affordable’ alternative anymore. Also, between the IP68 rating and a display that’s genuinely great for content consumption, the Galaxy A37 feels solid and premium in a way that many mid-rangers usually don’t.
Of course, if raw benchmark scores are something that matters to you most, then you’ll find faster Chinese handsets that offer more ‘bang for your buck’ on paper. But for most of the folks out there, the Galaxy A37 is simply the reliable pick that won’t give you a headache. The One UI software experience is clean, the main camera is surprisingly consistent, and the battery life easily gets me through a full day.
In short, the Galaxy A37 is a polished, predictable daily driver that’s easy to live with, if your wallet can stomach the new normal.
Also read: Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro review: A strong premium pick, especially for Galaxy users