Samsung Galaxy A37 review: gateway to high-end phone experience

The Samsung Galaxy A37 was launched in India recently alongside its bigger sibling, the Galaxy A57, as part of Samsung’s 2026 A-series lineup. While the Galaxy A57 takes the spotlight for its near-flagship offerings, the Galaxy A37 is positioned a tier below to offer a similar experience at a more accessible price. Right off the bat, it’s evident that the device focuses on providing Samsung’s core strengths, such as the signature One UI experience and a long-term software support policy. But does the Galaxy A37 carry enough appeal for a starting price of Rs 41,999? Find out in this review.

Quick verdict

The Samsung Galaxy A37 excels in offering a premium in-hand feel with Gorilla Glass Victus+ on both sides, a comfortable build, well-designed and long-supported software, and a reliable 50MP main camera for everyday photography. Performance is sufficient for light to moderate usage, while the 5,000mAh battery easily lasts a full day. However, for stronger gaming performance, you might want to consider other options.

Elegant build with heavy emphasis on durability

The Samsung Galaxy A37 tries to keep things simple by going for a boxy design with rounded corners, much like its predecessor. There are subtle curves on the edges of the sideframe, which aid in holding the phone comfortably. The three cameras on the rear sit within a vertical pill-shaped island, while the LED flashlights sit right beside it. While I liked how elegant the Awesome Lavender colourway, which we received for review, looks, the Galaxy A37 also comes in Awesome Graygreen and Awesome Charcoal.

The biggest highlight of the design is its durability. The Galaxy A37 offers IP68 water and dust resistance along with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection on both the front and rear. During my one week of using the device, both the front and back panels have endured zero scratches or scuffs despite pulling the phone in and out of pockets and tossing it on flat surfaces several times a day.

The weight of the Samsung Galaxy A37 sits well under 200g at 196g and features a thickness of 7.4mm, just 0.5mm thicker than the Galaxy A57. Over time, I experienced no discomfort while using the phone one-handed for long periods.

An enjoyable AMOLED display on offer

Upfront, the Samsung Galaxy A37 sports a 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display, which is capable of refreshing at 120Hz, and features peak brightness and HBM brightness of 1,900nits and 1,200nits, respectively. As is tradition with Samsung’s upper midrange and high-end smartphones, the Galaxy A37’s display delivered an enjoyable content-viewing experience. While I wished the bezels could’ve been symmetrical, the display offered a great blend of vibrancy, detail, and contrast, whether in YouTube or OTT apps like Prime Video.

Coming to the brightness, the display gets sufficiently bright for indoor use; however, during sunny conditions, the screen’s legibility takes a slight hit, especially in apps running in dark mode. With a 120Hz refresh rate, I found all the apps on the Galaxy A37 to run at the peak refresh rates, even though there’s no additional option to toggle 120Hz for specific apps.

Strong battery endurance

With a 5,000mAh battery, the Samsung Galaxy A37 may fall behind the rivals with bigger batteries, but it seems to be optimised well. However, during regular usage, I found the phone to conveniently deliver over a day’s worth of battery backup, including over 9 hours of screen on time during one of the battery runs. Even though the competing phones may offer better battery backup, the Galaxy A37 should keep up with most use cases, especially for working professionals and movie/show enthusiasts.

While you can refer to the screenshots below of every charge cycle, the majority of my usage on the Galaxy A37 included scrolling through Instagram, binge-watching content on YouTube and Prime Video, chatting on WhatsApp, and clicking pictures for several minutes. Besides that, location, Bluetooth, mobile data, and Wi-Fi were kept enabled throughout the testing period, with Always On Display turned on occasionally.

Long supported software with mature UI design

The Samsung Galaxy A37, along with the Galaxy A57, are among the phones to launch with One UI 8.5 (based on Android 16) out of the box, right after the Galaxy S26 series. Since I had my first interaction with One UI 8.5 on the Galaxy A37, I was impressed by how many noticeable changes the update brings over One UI 8 and even One UI 7. Right off the bat, you’ll notice the revamped floating bottom tab in first-party apps, such as Phone, Gallery, Clock, etc.

Speaking of the Clock app, it has received a complete aesthetic overhaul, where the Alarms, Stopwatch, and Timer pages display a noticeable gradient in the background. Similarly, the Calculator app displays greenish glowing effects when pressing any key within the app. In Settings, My Files, and Calendar, the search bar has been repositioned towards the bottom, which I feel is a welcome change for better reachability.

Apart from that, Samsung has packed in a truckload of nifty features and customisation options, which include Modes and Routines, Object eraser within Gallery, voice transcription for voice and call recordings, lockscreen personalisation to switch up the clock’s look and position per your liking, and more. Coming to the major highlight, the Galaxy A37 is assured of six years of OS upgrades, along with six years of security patch updates. Meaning, the device will receive Android updates up to Android 22.

Reliable primary camera for everyday photography

Compared to its predecessor, the camera setup of the Samsung Galaxy A37 hasn’t changed much, as it continues to feature a 50MP primary camera, an 8MP ultrawide lens, and a 5MP macro lens. Up front, there’s a 12MP selfie shooter, which is capable of recording videos in up to 4K resolution at 30FPS, just like the rear cameras. Right from the first shot, I noticed the phone has a very fast shutter speed, which comes in handy when shooting in windy conditions, especially for close-ups.

Talking about the camera outputs, it’s instantly noticeable that the Galaxy A37’s colour science leans towards producing saturated green and red tones, resulting in punchy and poppy daylight images, especially for flowers. The details in the images are sufficient, while the dynamic range is also on point. However, I do wish that at 2x zoom the images carried more details. During night or low light, the phone does a great job of retaining the dark tones of the sky, while areas without light sources may appear grainy.

The ultrawide tends to darken the tones, resulting in dull images even in low light and just like every other 8MP unit, the details are rendered soft, especially when you specifically look for it. The 5MP macro camera is able to produce decent-looking shots as long as the lighting is adequate and hands are stable.

Now, let’s take a look at how the Samsung Galaxy A37 fares against the POCO X8 Pro Max, which also features a 50MP primary camera and an 8MP ultrawide setup on the rear:

Daylight

I liked that the Samsung Galaxy A37’s focal length at 1x defaults to 23mm, while the POCO X8 Pro Max produces narrower shots due to a 26mm focal length. In the comparison above, even though the detail levels are on par, the Galaxy A37 pulls ahead by delivering accurate colours and better dynamic range.

Ultrawide

As noted above, the Galaxy A37 tends to make the ultrawide shots dull and adds cooler tones; the colour consistency between the primary and ultrawide lens fares better on the POCO X8 Pro Max. The details also appear better on the POCO phone.

Portrait

In portrait mode shots, since the skin tones and colours are the most crucial aspects, the Galaxy A37 manages to retain accurate colours of the skin and clothes, while the X8 Pro Max adds white highlights to the skin, resulting in a less appealing image. However, the POCO handset goes ahead of the Galaxy A37 by delivering better edge detection. 

Selfie

In selfies, the Samsung Galaxy A37 delivers a contrasty yet better-looking image by retaining the dark tones of the scene. The POCO X8 Pro Max, on the other hand, has blown out the colours of the subject and background, giving the Galaxy A37 an advantage.

Night Mode

During the night, the POCO X8 Pro Max manages to have better control over exposure and light sources. Similarly, it removes grain effects from the image as much as possible, whereas the Galaxy A37’s shot has noticeable noise and grain in the darker parts of the image.

Performance that doesn’t chase big numbers

Powering up the Samsung Galaxy A37 is the Exynos 1480 SoC, Samsung’s proprietary octa-core mobile processor built on 4nm fabrication with up to 2.75GHz clock speeds. While our testing is based on the 12GB RAM + 256GB storage variant, the Galaxy A37 also comes in an 8GB RAM + 128GB storage configuration.

As you can see from the charts below, the Galaxy A37 isn’t chasing big benchmark numbers. Instead, the handset prioritises everyday performance and can even manage some casual gaming.

When it comes to the actual experience of operating the phone, the Galaxy A37 offered sufficient prowess for running daily apps and various kinds of functions, such as quickly summoning the quick settings panel, recents app page, or double-tapping the power button to perform specific actions, such as opening Cricbuzz in my case to view the score of a live IPL match. Even though the performance should suffice for casual users, there were a few instances where I found minute lags when scrolling through apps like Spotify and Reddit.

When it comes to games, the Galaxy A37 was able to deliver an average of 57.7 frames per second in Call of Duty: Mobile in the ‘Very High + Very High’ graphics setting during 30 minutes of gameplay in our gaming tests. Similarly, in BGMI, when playing the game in ‘HDR + Ultra’ setting, we acheived average of 38.7 frames per second in the same 30-minute duration. In both games, the phone’s temperature stayed well under 34.1 degree Celcius. Bottom line is, if you like spending a few minutes of your day playing titles like CODM and BGMI, the Galaxy A37 should serve you fine; however, if the best possible frame rates and graphical details are your priority, it’s worth seeking alternatives.

Final verdict: Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A37?

Coming at Rs 41,999, the Samsung Galaxy A37 gets several things right. To name a few, it sports an elegant design and build that doesn’t cause discomfort when held for prolonged durations, a flagship-grade front and back glass protection in the form of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+, which actually keeps scratches at bay even during rough use, and a mature and feature-rich software that will be supported for years.

While the 50MP primary camera can produce poppy images using fast shutter speeds, perfect for pushing out on social media, the ultrawide requires improvements in terms of details. Surprisingly, the 5MP macro can click decent-looking images in daylight as long as you don’t pixel peep. On the other hand, the 12MP outputs contrasty tones, ideal for most scenarios.

Moving on, the performance hardware of the Galaxy A37 isn’t class-leading, but it should be able to keep up with light to moderate usage, such as running social media apps, multitasking between apps, and capturing camera clicks. Similarly, the 5,000mAh battery, which doesn’t seem huge on paper, should offer enough endurance for a whole working day.
If you’re in the market for a phone that prioritises high-end gaming and exceptionally strong battery life, shelling out extra for the POCO X8 Pro Max and iQOO 15R could be well worth it.

Editor’s rating: 8.2/10

Reasons to buy the Samsung Galaxy A37

• Vibrant and sufficiently detailed display for binge-watching content.
• Strong scratch resistance on both the front and back thanks to Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+, along with IP68 certification for water and dust protection.
• Software support of up to six years with a mature UI design.
• Primary camera performs reliably well for everyday photography.

Reasons to skip the Samsung Galaxy A37

• Performance may not appeal to power users.
• Ultrawide lens needs improvements in terms of details.