The price of consumer tech seems to have only been going up lately, and you see that pretty explicitly with phones. All of the flagship options from the big brands like Samsung and Apple lead with products that they’re list for near $1,000, if not, more. It might surprise you to find that you can still grab a decently robust smartphone for a fraction of the price.
The Samsung Galaxy A17 is a budget smartphone that comes in at a pretty unbelievable price. It launched last year at just $200, and with it’s current 18% off sale, you can get it even cheaper. The phone is now selling on Amazon for just $165 for a limited time.
Fully-Featured Phone on a Budget
When you hear “budget” in front of “phone,” this might paint a picture that you’re going to be making a lot of compromises on features to get the price down—but that’s not really the case here with the Samsung Galaxy A17.
You still get a large touchscreen, a triple-lens camera, and even 5G connectivity. The biggest difference you’re find between the A17 and the S26 lineup is its everyday performance. The Galaxy A17 only houses 4GB of RAM and a less powerful CPU than the S26. That will translate to a phone that runs noticeably slower, but when you’re only paying pennies on the dollar, that trade-off might just be worth it. Same goes for the camera system which can take pictures up close or at a distance, but won’t really stack up against what you can take on the S26 Ultra.
Honestly, if a a slower phone could make me put it down more often instead of staying up late doomscrolling, you could turn this into an advantage over the S26.
Since everything about the internet became mobile-first in the early 2010s, having a smartphone stopped being a luxury and started being a necessity in our daily lives. In order to maintain social relationships, staying involved with your community, or even hold a job, you pretty much need one—especially now that basically every restaurant, every event all require scanning or displaying a QR code. Eddy Burback has a great video where he experiments with living without a smartphone for a stretch of time and you can see just how ingrained having one is in our culture.
The Samsung Galaxy A17 represents a great option for people to stay connected with the world these tech giants have built for us, without having to shell out thousands of dollars every few years to do so.