★★★★★ 5
A great phone...but compared to what?
Digital Storage Capacity: 128 GB, Color: Black
Tldr: Good phone for this price, noticeably better than older A13 and I wish more people would include context to their reviews. Glad I bought mine.
I'm leaving a long and detailed review because I got tired of reading through reviews that seemed contradictory, or said something was "bad" but without any context. If I made a poor choice buying a phone I'd likely be stuck with it for some years. I'm hoping this helps others like myself who are reading the reviews.
Ok, so the most important context is what phone I'm coming from over to the A17 5g. My old phone was Samsung A13 5g. My opinions of the new phone will be largely based on how they compare to the previous phone I used. So it's budget phone to budget phone, with the A17 having approximately 3-4ish years newer tech (or same tech but cheaper.) Both phones are being used on metro PCS (T mobile) network.
So I've now had the A17 for exactly one week. I primarily use my phone for android auto, text, checking email, web browser, occasional YouTube and maybe once per week on some games. I don't use it for heavy loads like massive file transfers or rendering video. It's fairly light use overall.
So far, the things I've been most pleased with are the screen and software/system layout. The screen has decent color and brightness and is MUCH better than the A13. Both screens claim to run at 90hz but the change from the old 270 PPI (I believe stands for pixel per inch or some equivalent) to 385 PPI feels massive. Much cleaner image from text to images. The change from LCD to AMOLED gives much better contrast with deeper colors. The software and system layout are a bit harder to describe in detail. It's more of a personal/ascetic preference. Things look and feel a lot cleaner. There are added optional features like side slide tabs to house shortcuts for certain apps. Another feature is top down swipe from the right for system shortcuts and from the left for notification, so they are smashed together.
Another improvement, though less so than the screen and software changes, is in the speed and responsiveness of the phone. This one also needs to be put in context a bit. I'm sure some would complain about it while coming from a more expensive and technologically superior phone. I have my own bias, as I'm coming from an inferior phone which had over 3 years of use (slowing it down over time.) I also use it for mostly light tasks. That being said, I am pleased that the phone is noticeably more responsive than my old one. Most of the lagging happens on start up (goes away after a few mins while the phone is connecting a bunch of apps and putting out/requesting info like date/time/location.) When I booted it for the first time, that was the worst lag I had. It will also slow down if you have several apps running at the same time. I feel like that's obvious, but some people genuinely don't know that if you hit the home button to leave an app, you need to bring up multi view and actually swipe the box away to close it fully. If you never close apps and never restart your phone on occasion it WILL slow way down. While using the phone for max 1 or 2 things at time it runs perfectly fine, and is better than the A13.
Battery life is good. I went from appx. 5000mAh to 5000mAh phones, so besides the slight degradation in the old phones battery life it should be the same. 5000mAh for my uses feels excellent overall. It can go for a full 2 days without charging. Charging speed itself seems improved, but that's never mattered too much for me so I can't comment much. Seems fine though, roughly 1.5h charge from mostly dead to full. That's using a 25w fast charger block and appropriate USB c cable. I didn't use the cable that came with the phone so I can't comment. It didn't come with a charger block, by design. Your mileage on charge speed will vary based on what you're using to charge the phone with. The phone can't charge at full speed if you're using a 5w charger from 15 years ago.
I don't have much to say about the camera. I rarely take photos and when I do it's usually quick snap shots of paper instructions or to share location. I believe (though I'm not sure) the A13 was also 50mp front camera but either the the other 2 lenses have been upgraded or they improved the camera software, because pictures do look a bit cleaner. It's not night and day or anything, but it looks better to my eye. Camera is also faster to adjust light and contrast when first focusing on a object, as compared to the old A13.
Build quality seems a little improved. They are both budget phones and how build quality "feels" is inherently subjective but to me it does seem a little better.
A quick note on activating this new phone...this may only be an issue I personally had, but in case this helps someone else I'd like to include it. I had a bit of trouble switching my physical SIM card out of my old phone and into the new. The metro app was telling me the phone wouldn't be compatible unless I changed phone plans (which is BS.) I had to call customer service and they opted to use the eSiM feature, rather than swapping the physical Sim. I noticed they also used the new phones 2nd SIM number to activate it, while i had tried using first. If you're having trouble perhaps check the phones info from the settings menu, and then try eSIM activation using the 2nd address. It worked fine for me after this.
Samsung has a quick transfer feature if your previous phone was a Samsung. It basically copies over everything from your old phone, including apps, pictures, contacts and even text message history ect. It took 3 or 4 attempts (it didn't want to connect and dropped the connection once at 30% complete.) Luckily if it disconnects part way through, it will pick up where it left off, without needing to restart. Once it finally had a stable connection it took me about 6 minutes, it will vary based on how much stuff you have to move over. You need to download an app to do the transfer, but it will prompt you and take you to it's link.
Summery: I find it pretty impressive how nice this phone feels both compared to its older model and for its price point in general. I found it frustrating that people would say this part or that was crap or great, but without giving any context to what they based that opinion off of. In my opinion, based on how cheap this phone is and compared to its older model (A13) this is an awesome phone so far, being one week in. Screen is a big improvement, system software and layout is better (IMO) and they seem to be making incremental improvements to things like the camera and overall build. For this price point I find it really impressive what you actually get. If you're coming from an older mid range phone I expect it will either be inferior or about the same. If you're coming from another phone in the 200 range it should be decent to good. For less than 200 and for what I use it for though, I'm very happy I bought this phone.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2026
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