Keep your expectations low for this cheap smartphone, and it might be just what you need

Most phones these days cost $500 or more. That’s a good chunk of change if all you want is a phone that can make calls, send text messages, and snap photos to send to friends and family.

If you don’t place high demands on your phone, the 6.5-inch Samsung Galaxy A03s might offer all you need, and you can get it at a rock-bottom price. It retails for $160, and you can get it for as little as $50 from prepaid cell phone carriers such as Boost Mobile. Fifty bucks!

So what’s the catch? The Galaxy A03s ranks near the bottom of CR’s smartphone ratings. Other phones outperform it on camera image quality (rear image, video, and selfie), and CR’s testers say the phone is sluggish. I found that to be the case over the few days I used the Galaxy A03s—it’s the slowest phone I’ve used in recent memory, taking a second or two to do things like bring up the onscreen keyboard or switch between apps. Also, this phone doesn’t support 5G.

On the plus side, the phone has a long battery life, lasting 39 hours on one charge in our labs. And despite its low price and plastic build, the Samsung Galaxy A03s survived our tough durability testing.

Battery: The large 5000mAh battery can last nearly two days. The phone doesn’t have fast charging, however.

Expandable storage: The Samsung Galaxy A03s comes with just 32 gigabytes of internal storage, which is small by today’s standards, but you can add more storage via the microSD card slot. That’s a feature many more expensive phones have abandoned.

Headphone jack: Prefer wired headphones to wireless ones? This is one of the few phones available today with a headphone jack.

This is the least expensive phone in Samsung’s Galaxy series, so you can expect some compromises. The 6.5-inch display is an LCD, rather than the sharper and higher-quality OLED screens found in more expensive phones. I found it difficult to watch videos outdoors in direct sunlight, although the screen was perfectly fine indoors and CR testers give it a Fair rating.

The Samsung Galaxy A03s also has only 3 gigabytes of memory, while other phones have 6GB or more. That low RAM and an outdated processor that was introduced in 2018 are responsible for the phone’s relatively slow performance. If you’re used to instant responsiveness from a phone’s touchscreen, you’re likely to notice the lag on this phone. It may not be a deal breaker—that’s up to you. But you do need a bit of patience when you’re tapping through menus.

I played a few games on the Galaxy A03s, because video games often push devices to their limits. The phone performed fine with 2D puzzle games and 3D strategy games, but it crashed a few times trying to run the intensive and resource-demanding Genshin Impact game.

The cameras on the phone are “good enough,” according to our testers. There’s a 13-megapixel main rear camera, a 2-megapixel depth sensor (which aids the main camera for blurring the background to create bokeh effects), and a 5-megapixel front camera. The quick photos I took looked good enough to share in a group chat or on social media, but the colors were a bit off. For example, I took a snapshot of a stuffed animal that’s the color of blue painter’s tape or a plastic recycling bin and it turned out a light, pastel blue. Zooming in on the photo, the edges looked blurry, so this isn’t a phone for professional photographers or people who may want enlarged prints. Also, there’s no image stabilization, so videos can turn out shaky.

I found the fingerprint sensor, which is located on the power button on the right side of the phone, to be unreliable. When I tried to unlock the phone with my thumb, the Galaxy A03s often told me it couldn’t find a matching fingerprint and to try again. After multiple attempts, trying different angles, the phone shut down the fingerprint option and made me enter my password, defeating the whole purpose.

The plastic chassis has a bit of a flex to it, which makes me wonder whether the Galaxy A03s could be a contender for one of those YouTube videos where someone breaks a phone in half with their bare hands. (I did not test this.) Even though it’s an inexpensive device, you’ll probably want to put it in a sturdy case.

Despite all its negatives, the Galaxy A03s would make a great starter phone for a teenager or perhaps someone who travels often and prioritizes long battery life over everything else.

If you’re willing to sacrifice top performance for the savings, the Galaxy A03s might be for you. It delivers on all the basics and is the lowest-priced phone in our ratings.

There are nearly 50 smartphones in our ratings, with new models added regularly throughout the year when manufacturers release them. As with all the products we test, CR buys the phones at retail to ensure we’re getting the same device you would.

Our experts run a series of tests to evaluate things like the phone’s touch responsiveness, how long the battery lasts, the color accuracy and clarity of the screen, the image quality from the cameras under multiple lighting conditions, and, if it’s rated for water resistance, whether the device survives a good dunk. We even subject phones to a tumbler test, in which we drop the phone 100 times to test its durability.

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Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 2022, Consumer Reports, Inc.

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