Samsung’s premium mid-range Galaxy A55 reviewed

Samsung’s new Galaxy A55, with flagship-like design, raises questions about its battery and camera performance. After over a week of use, here’s how it compares

Samsung’s Galaxy A series has a reputation for providing excellent value and a flagship-like experience at a fraction of the cost. With the new Galaxy A55, Samsung appears to be sticking to the ‘Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken’ approach while introducing some changes, such as the inclusion of a physical Knox chip and a metal frame. I’ve been using the Galaxy A55 as my primary device for over a week now, and here’s what I appreciate and what I find lacking in Samsung’s latest premium mid-range smartphone.

Solid design

While the Galaxy A55 may appear similar to its predecessor initially, it is not. Samsung has replaced plastic with an aluminum frame, giving it the feel of a Galaxy S series device.

I received the ‘Awesome Iceblue’ variant, which resembles the blue iPhone 15. Samsung seems to have used Gorilla Glass Victus+ for both the front and back of the device, a feature I have yet to see on mid-range devices.

Samsung has introduced a new feature called ‘Key island,’ which is a raised edge on the right side of the phone containing the volume and power buttons. Initially, I thought it was just a gimmick. However, if you’re like me and listen to music while biking or walking, the raised edges are quite useful. They make it easy to feel the buttons when the phone is in your pocket.

Although the phone has a premium look and feel, the metal frame and glass back contribute to its weight. The Galaxy A55 weighs 213 grams without a cover, making it quite heavy. However, like other Samsung devices, the Galaxy A55 provides an excellent grip, even without a cover.

However, when speaking for more than 5 minutes, I found it challenging to hold the phone in one hand due to its weight. Although Samsung has effectively distributed the weight, I frequently had to switch hands because my wrists began to ache after holding the device in one hand for a few minutes. If you prefer lightweight phones, the Galaxy A55 may not be suitable for you.

Like its predecessor, the Galaxy A55 features IP67 water and dust resistance, allowing you to use it underwater without hesitation.

Big display

The Galaxy A55 features a 6.6-inch 120Hz AMOLED screen, slightly smaller than many devices in its price range. However, whether you’re watching videos, reading articles, or casually scrolling through reels, the phone is perfectly usable indoors and outdoors, at least for now.

I watched the first season of Vinland, and the colors and contrast are comparable to other devices in its price range. While the phone provides an immersive video-watching experience, I found the large bezels distracting, prompting me to wonder why Samsung hasn’t been able to eliminate them.

Clean UI

Despite lagging behind in performance compared to its competitors, the Galaxy A series surprises with improved performance thanks to software optimization and support.

Equipped with the Exynos 1480 chipset developed in-house and the Xclipse 530 GPU based on the AMD RDNA2 graphics architecture, the Galaxy A55 may not be the quickest phone in its segment, but it gets the job done.

Regarding One UI 6.1, based on Android 14, the software is top-notch. The animations are fluid, and the phone is loaded with several useful features, such as text call, which attempts to understand the caller’s speech and convert it to text.

Similar to its predecessor, the Galaxy A55 is not designed for serious gamers. While it can run the latest games smoothly, you may often be restricted to medium or low settings for titles like Call of Duty: Warzone or Genshin Impact. While the latter does allow you to max out the graphics, it causes the game to drop frames and the phone to heat up after a few minutes. The phone did heat up during benchmarks and long gaming sessions, but the temperature remained manageable.

The Galaxy A55 comes with some pre-installed bloatware, which can be easily uninstalled. However, during the device setup, I was somewhat compelled to install some apps that I didn’t want.

When attempting to skip this step, I discovered that the only way to do so was to exit the phone setup, which I did. However, those apps were automatically installed afterward. Additionally, when I paired my Galaxy Watch 4 with the Samsung phone, I received ads in the form of notifications on my wrist, which was quite frustrating. While I don’t mind ads and pre-installed apps, I did not anticipate this from a Rs 40,000 phone.

I have a few other Samsung products, such as the Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ and the Galaxy Buds. When paired with the Galaxy A55, the ecosystem does feel somewhat like Apple’s. I had no issues copying text from my tablet and pasting it on my phone, receiving and making calls from the tablet, and seamlessly switching my earbuds between devices.

Average cameras

The Samsung Galaxy A55 appears to have maintained the triple-camera setup of its predecessor, featuring a 50MP primary shooter, a 12MP ultrawide lens, and a 5MP macro lens.

The primary camera captures sharp and detailed photos in daylight while maintaining manageable saturation levels. The 12MP ultrawide lens performs well in good lighting, minimizing color shifts.

However, I noticed some exposure issues with the phone. When capturing a scene within a minute, the Galaxy A55 occasionally produces photos that appear dark, followed by photos that look as if they were taken on a sunny day.

When it comes to low-light or nighttime photography, I found the camera performance of the Galaxy A55 to be barely satisfactory. The images are passable for sharing on social media, but they often lack detail. Surprisingly, the camera struggled to handle light sources well, which is unexpected for a device in this price range.

The 12MP ultrawide lens captures good detail, but like most Samsung phones, it tends to oversaturate and increase contrast. The Galaxy A55 features a 32MP selfie camera, and although I don’t take many selfies, the camera does a decent job of preserving natural skin tones and capturing satisfactory photos during daylight.

Long battery life

The Galaxy A55 is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery that supports 25W charging. My typical usage includes streaming music for hours, playing a few games at night, making calls, and browsing the internet.

With light usage, the Galaxy A55 easily lasted me two days. However, if you frequently check your phone and rely heavily on mobile data, it will likely last you a day with approximately 6-7 hours of screen-on time. Charging the phone takes around an hour and a half, which feels outdated by today’s standards. I do wish Samsung would at least offer 45W wired charging, similar to the S-series devices.

The Galaxy A55 features a stereo speaker setup, with one speaker located at the top and the other at the bottom grill. When outdoors, the phone’s audio is more than sufficiently loud, delivering crisp and clear sound. The speakers were so powerful that even when I was lying down on the bed with a mixer running at full speed in the background, I could hear the music without any issues.