Samsung Galaxy A17 5G review

Familiar 6.7-inch 90Hz OLED display

The Galaxy A17 likely uses the exact same OLED panel from last year - 6.7-inch, 1080 x 2340px resolution, 90Hz refresh rate.

There are no fancy features like HDR video support or granular refresh rate control, but we don't expect them either.

The maximum brightness in auto mode is decent enough at 738 nits and 353 nits in manual mode. The boost brightness sure isn't very impressive, but it's enough to get the job done even on a bright sunny day.

Notably, the phone doesn't have a hardware proximity sensor and uses a virtual one, so it might be an issue when talking on the phone sometimes as the screen lights up mid-call. It's not always the case, but your experience may vary depending on how you hold the phone.

Refresh rate

The available refresh rate control options are pretty straightforward. The High option locks the refresh rate at 90Hz, while the Standard is capped at 60Hz. There's no automatic switching.

Battery life

We expected the Galaxy A17 to have similar battery life to its predecessor, given that the phone runs on the same hardware. The Galaxy A17 and A16 (both 5G models) feature an Exynos 1330 chip, a 6.7-inch 90Hz OLED display and a 5,000 mAh battery.

However, we found a slight discrepancy between the two, likely due to the difference in the software version at the time of testing. Either way, the Galaxy A17's battery life is far from impressive. For a low-power chipset like this one, we expected better web browsing runtimes. The video playback and gaming tests returned respectable scores, though. The overall Active Use Score of 11:48 is below average for the price range.

Charging speed

There's no change in the charging technology either. Just like its predecessor, the Galaxy A17 supports up to 25W wired charging over the Power Delivery protocol, as long as your adapter supports PPS charging negotiation. Any charger advertised to offer USB-PD+PPS should work but Samsung's own 25W adapter (sold separately) is usually a cost-effective way to get an adapter that supports the required PPS profile needed for the fastest possible charging on the Galaxy A17 5G.

Of course, the fastest possible charging speed is a relative concept here as the A17 is one of the slowest devices in this regard, taking around 1 hour and 20 minutes to reach a full charge. Considerably slower than most direct competitors.

But if you find the charging, for whatever reason, too fast, then you can limit the charging speed in the Battery settings, or, if your phone spends lots of time plugged in and charged fully, you may opt to limit the charging to a preset level of 80, 85 or 90% to prolong the battery's longevity.

Speaker

The Galaxy A17 still lacks stereo loudspeakers, even though most competitors offer a set of those. The A17 offers only a bottom-firing speaker.

As a result, the loudness score isn't very high - -26.4 LUFS, also rated as "Good". In terms of quality, expect rather flat-sounding tracks with noticeable distortion at higher volume.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.