Samsung’s Galaxy A37 and Galaxy A57 Phones Get Price Hikes
Last month, Samsung has increased the price of two of its flagship smartphones by $100. Now its two new mid-range models, the Galaxy A37 5G and Galaxy A57 5G, are getting a $50 price increase, despite minor hardware updates over last year’s Galaxy A36 and A56. Samsung has also reduced the range: there is no successor to the Galaxy A26 this year, at least not yet.
These price increases may be indicative of the economic climate, including tariffs, rising oil prices due to the war in Iran, and the memory shortage that has driven up RAM and storage costs across the board. If the price of a phone doesn’t increase, that could still mean fewer significant hardware upgrades to reduce costs, much like the recent Google Pixel 10a. (The outlier is the iPhone 17e, which managed to add features like MagSafe and a new processor, along with a few other upgrades, without changing the price compared to the iPhone 16e.)
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“Price increases or ‘spec reductions’ have become the norm,” wrote Jitesh Ubrani, research director at IDC, in an email to WIRED. “Unfortunately, consumers will have to adapt to this new reality. The biggest bottleneck for brands right now is memory, with suppliers facing limited availability and significantly higher costs than in previous years.” Ubrani says that while geopolitical factors have not yet affected hardware prices, they add uncertainty that could increase costs in the future.
Samsung hasn’t commented on exactly what’s behind the price hike. However, he says consumers considering its A-series phones prioritize upgrading out of necessity (maybe their current phone just broke or is really old) and don’t care much about AI features. Value for money is the main purchasing factor, above performance and battery life. So it’s a bit strange to see the company raising prices, even if Samsung hopes the improvements will be convincing.
The Galaxy A57 5G costs $550 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and $610 if you increase the storage to 256GB. Meanwhile, the Galaxy A37 5G starts at $450 for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, or $540 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. They will both officially go on sale on April 9.
Small updates
The processor upgrades are the main highlight of these phones. The Galaxy A37 is powered by Samsung’s Exynos 1480, which is expected to offer 14% better CPU performance, 24% better graphics and, perhaps shockingly, 167% better neural processing performance, which is useful for AI tasks. That’s compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip in last year’s Galaxy A36.
The Galaxy A57 is equipped with the Exynos 1680, which isn’t a huge improvement over the Exynos 1580 in the Galaxy A56, but still offers a nice improvement: 10% better CPU performance, 7% faster graphics, and 42% better neural processing. These two phones still have the same 5,000mAh battery capacity and charging speeds. (There’s no wireless charging, although competing phones like the iPhone 17e or Google Pixel 10a offer the feature.)
