Galaxy A55 Review

  Samsung Galaxy A55 5G 

Review in Detail

The Galaxy A55 5G is one of Samsung's mid-range phones for 2024, with a price tag of £439 in the UK or €479 in the rest of Europe. Whether this is a permanent price reduction remains to be seen, but that £364 price converts to around $465. Samsung's Galaxy A55 5G sits at the top of the company's more affordable A-series phone range, offering solid all-round specs at prices much lower than the top-end Galaxy S24 line. The A55 packs a large 6.6-inch display, a capable octa-core processor and a triple rear-camera setup into a colourful glass and metal body. The phone hasn't blown evertone away with its performance in any respect, it feels like a decent phone that's equipped to handle your daily essentials, with enough power under the hood for some casual gaming on your bus ride home from work. This year Samsung has decided not to release its Galaxy A5x model in the US market. It's strange, as the A55 5G is a great mid-range phone and it should be available for everyone to check out and buy. It comes with Samsung's classic premium build quality, three cameras including a telephoto one in the mix, and impressive sound quality. Following are the main things you should know about this phone.

Design and Display

The display is big enough for video on the go. At 6.6 inches, the A55's display provides plenty of room for gaming or watching YouTube videos on the move. It's vibrant, too, with punchy colours which does justice to colourful games. The maximum 120Hz refresh rate makes fast motion look nice and smooth. The screen is bright and avoids distracting reflections from overhead indoor lights. It's comfortable to use outdoors under the mostly grey clouds but it won't fare quite as well under bright, midday summer sun. Protecting the display is Gorilla Glass Victus+, which is supposed to be significantly more durable against scratches and drops compared to the Gorilla Glass 5 that came with the predecessor. Samsung does not specify whether the back glass panel shares the same protection. 

No more plastic. The Galaxy A55 5G is the first generation in Samsung's A5x series to drop all plastic from its build, featuring a new aluminium frame. This makes the A55 not only look, but also feel more like a Galaxy S24/S24 Plus, with the three protruding cameras from the back glass panel and flat sides which nicely curve at the edges. Speaking of the frame, we of course cannot forget to mention the new design choice that comes with this year's Galaxy A series, which is the slight bump on the right side which houses the power and volume keys. This bump would stick out too much, but that is not the case. In fact, it somewhat adds to ease of use, as it helped to easily find the keys just by feel. There haven't been any major upgrades to the display this year. You still get a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, HDR 10 support, and similar brightness levels. The few differences include a slightly larger 6.6-inch screen (vs 6.4 on the A54), and a variable refresh rate mode, which means the phone can go from 120Hz to 60Hz to preserve energy.

The A55 is comfortable to hold, despite the fact that it is slightly larger than its predecessor, which measures at 6.23 x 3.02 x 0.32in (158.2 x 76.7 x 8.2mm). It is also heavier by around 10g, which is probably due to new metal frame, as metal is denser, hence heavier than plastic. The Galaxy A55 5G comes in four colours which includes Iceblue, Lilac, Navy and Lemon. The glass back panel combined with the darker colour means that fingerprints are always visible, especially in brighter spaces. The frame has a nice polish to it and makes the phone look stylish. At this point, however, bezels are mostly thin enough to allow for an immersive experience, so we wouldn't worry too much about them. All in all the Galaxy A55 5G display is an utter joy to use no matter for what purpose. Even in bright conditions, such as a clear day with lots of sun, you would be able to see the what was on the screen easily, without straining the eyes. As you probably expect from Samsung, even its mid-range phones come with a very simple unboxing experience. This is what you get inside the Galaxy A55 5G box:-

The Galaxy A55 5G

A USB-C to USB-C cable

Documentation

SIM tool

It takes too long for the sensor to recognize your finger, and a good second and a half passes before the phone unlocks. The good news is that it is at least accurate. The other biometric option you can opt for is face recognition. If you turn on the "lift to wake" and turn off "swipe to unlock" it becomes a bit quicker compared to the fingerprint reader, but not as secure, so you kind of have to pick your choice. The only improvements we see here is with the colour calibration. Samsung has not changed much else, but at least the A55 has more accurate colours compared to its predecessor.  

Battery

A55 packs in a sizable 5,000-mAh battery. The display is likely the biggest drain on battery, so turning the refresh rate down to 60Hz may help. The battery life has substantially increased over the predecessor. A55 would last a whole day of gaming, video streaming and browsing social media with about 6-7 hours of screen on time. Even after a day with such heavy usage, though, there was typically around 30-40% battery left. The screen has a maximum 120Hz refresh rate but you can lower it to 60Hz which should help give slightly better battery life. The new Exynos 1480 chip inside the A55 5G is not that much better in power efficiency as far as web browsing and video streaming goes, but it did manage to go between 30 and 60 minutes more than the predecessor. The charging speed has not changed since last year, which is 25W. And yes, still no wireless charging with Samsung's A5x series.

Performance

It's powerful enough for gaming. It's powered by an octa-core Exynos 1480 chip, which offers more than enough power for your everyday Instagramming and web browsing. But still it's powerful enough to play games like Genshin Impact and PUBG at decent frame rates. The Galaxy A55 5G comes with the new Exynos 1480 chipset built on the 4nm process. It builds upon the previous generation, the Exynos 1380 that came with the Galaxy A54 5G, in every aspect. Performance has increased across the board. Power-efficiency has also improved. By playing few League of Legends Wild Rift games, we can say that things ran smoothly, without any overheating issues, drops in the frame rate, or lag. The game automatically set the graphics settings at medium for the Galaxy A55 5G, with a frame rate of 60fps. Opting for higher settings than medium prompt a warning that the device might overheat or force the game to shut down, so you can get a general idea of the phone's capabilities based on that.

There's a USB C port on the bottom and a microSD card slot on the top edge.  Apart from the gaming experience, the A55 was smooth and fluid during navigating the UI and scrolling through social media and websites, which is something we cannot say for the more affordable A35. As for RAM, this year you get 8GB with the base model, which is a jump from last year's 6GB of RAM. You can expand the storage. While you can pay more upfront to buy the A55 with 256GB of storage rather than the base 128GB, it's not necessary as you can expand the storage with microSD cards. A microSD slot is an extremely rare feature these days, which is shared by the 2nd SIM slot. It supports up to 1TB. For storage options, you can pick between 128GB and 256GB. It is still UFS 3.1 storage, which is one generation older than the latest UFS 4.0 storage.  

Camera

The camera hardware that comes with the Galaxy A55 5G is the same as the A54 5G, including the 50MP wide (main) snapper, a 12MP ultra-wide and a 5MP macro. It will do a good job in most cases. Keep in mind that even though the main camera is 50MP, the images that it takes are 12.5MP. That is because the phone uses pixel binning, which basically means creating larger pixels out of smaller ones. There is a 50MP mode if wish to use the full resolution of the main snapper, but note that you need lots of light to take photos in that mode. You can record video at 4K 30fps or 1080p 60fps, and the good news is that the image quality looks amazing from the main camera, with very good stabilization. You also have the ability to swap between the main and the ultra-wide cameras while shooting at 4K 30fps, although the transition is not one of the smoothest ones out there.

The triple rear camera setup includes a 50-megapixel main camera, 12-megapixel ultra wide and an additional 5-megapixel macro camera. Shots from both the wide and ultra wide cameras are decent for the price, offering solid exposures and enough detail for sharing to Instagram. Some shots do suffer from heavy-handed software "optimizing," with shadows looking washed out and colours looking oversaturated (especially blue skies). This is fairly common on Samsung phones, and while it might put serious photographers off, those just wanting casual snaps of family and friends will be satisfied. There are three rear cameras, although the macro lens is a bit pointless. It's nice to see that colour reproduction is not as overly saturated as it was on previous generations. What's even better is that swapping between the 50MP main and 12MP ultra-wide cameras does not seem to affect the level of contrast and the colours, resulting in a consistent look no matter which one you decide to use.

We expected a bit more detail from the main camera on the Galaxy A55 5G given its higher price tag, but it seems to perform on a similar level of the Galaxy A35 5G. The ultra-wide snapper, on the other hand, is quite good for this class, and it delivers images that are perfectly usable. Both cameras seem to have good HDR performance, with enough details in the shadows and highlights, while still retaining good levels of contrast in the image. A55's main camera are good during low-light conditions, with night shots being some of the best we have seen from a mid-range phone so far. The photos look realistic, without being overly brightened, but the important parts which are lit by light sources are well visible, and colours look what you would expect to see with your own eyes.

The selfie camera produced some stellar shots, with the right amount of sharpness and true-to-life colours. One thing to note, though, as you would notice from the second selfie shot where there are two people, is that it has very shallow depth of field, which means anything behind you is more blurred out. And this is natural "bokeh", as they call it, so you cannot fix it via software during or after the shot has being taken. The portrait mode also looks pretty good, having only a slight difficulty cutting out the subject's hair from what's behind them. The blurred out background is a bit too unrealistic. Last but not least, we have the zooming capabilities of the Galaxy A55, which are limited to digital zoom, as there is no dedicated telephoto camera. We can say that the 2X zoom is usable for a quick snapshot, but anything more, like 5X or 10X, is simply too low quality. The better course of action would probably be to shoot in the 50MP mode and then crip in on the image. The A55 5G's camera stabilization is very impressive, especially for a phone of its calibre. This can even be on of the strongest selling points for the A55. Besides that, everything else about the video recording is the same as when you take photos, from the HDR performance to the colour representation. One of the stronger aspects of the A55 5G is arguably its camera system, although we did expect Samsung to level things up in this segment in 2024. At this price, some competitors come with the same level of image quality and camera performance, even beating the A55 in some ways. Nevertheless, the camera system on Samsung's more premium "A" series remains one of the better ones in the market, especially when we factor in the ultra-wide snapper's image quality and ability to shoot at 4K 30fps.

Software

You get five years of software support. Samsung said that the A55 5G will receive four years of Android software support and an additional fifth year of security support, meaning this phone will still be safe to use in 2029. The A55 ships with Android 14 alongside Samsung's One UI 6.1. We won't be seeing the same 7 years of software support for Samsung's A series this year, unlike with its flagship Galaxy S24 series. One UI 6.1 offers a polished and user-friendly experience. Features like lock screen widgets provide convenient access to information, enhanced by the always-on display. Additionally, users can customize their A55's system with a colour palette matching their wallpaper for a personalized touch. There are also utility features like Quick Share enable seamless file transfers between Android devices and Windows PCs, akin to Apple's AirDrop feature.

Audio Quality

Unlike the Galaxy A35 5G, where the audio was a bit muffled throughout the whole volume range, the audio quality coming out of the Galaxy A55's speakers was spectacular no matter how we pushed it. With the A55, you get rich and clear sound, with a maximum volume that is loud enough to overpower some noisier environments. You can enjoy both music and speech in podcasts and videos.

Conclusion 

The Galaxy A55 is a tricky sell at its original price of £439 considering its battery life, camera performance and software support period are a step behind the £499 Pixel 8A. But its reduced £364 price makes it a different value proposition. It's not a phone that will wow you with pro-level camera skills or amazing new AI features, but it's a solid option for those in search of a basic phone that can handle everyday tasks, with a bit of casual gaming and video streaming thrown in. This year Samsung has kept things simple and minimal with the A55 5G, with the only meaningful upgrade being the new Exynos 1480 chipset, which is not even that much more powerful than the previous generation. There is also the tweaked design, dropping plastic altogether and adding a metal frame that makes the phone feel more high-end. Following are the some of the advantages / disadvantages:-

Advantages

Premium build with glass and metal body

Great-sounding speakers and awesome display quality

Good chipset performance

Affordable price

Decent performance

Large, vibrant display

Expandable storage

Disadvantages

You can get almost the same experience with the cheaper Galaxy A35 5G

Comes with bloatware

Charging is slow

Battery life

Shorter software support period than Pixel 8A