You’re probably tired of hearing about it, but the AI-brought RAM crisis is really affecting the entire smartphone landscape this year. Flagship upgrades are minor, if not inexistent, so far, while price hikes are looming for those that will land towards the second half of the year. Suffice it to say that 2026 is not the year to buy a new flagship phone from any company; you’re better off putting less money into last year’s models.
But Samsung is a bit of a special case. Because of its early-in-the-year Galaxy S26 launch, the company has demonstrated the impact of the pricing crisis before anyone else — not that it was trying too much in years prior, mind you. The Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus are glorified copy-pastes of last year’s S25 models, while the Ultra’s Privacy Display is as fascinating as it is problematic. There’s one phone in Samsung’s line-up that eschews a bit of this mess, though, and that’s the just-announced Galaxy A57. It is, on paper, the most “buyable” Samsung phone right now.
