Samsung launched the Galaxy A55 5G smartphone earlier this month as the successor to the Galaxy A54 5G. This gets a slightly better screen, faster Exynos 1480 4nm SoC, while retaining the same battery and charging, but the phone also gets costlier. Is this a good upgrade compared to the Galaxy A54 5G? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- Samsung Galaxy A55 5G 12GB RAM + 256GB in Awesome Ice blue colour
- USB Type-C to C Cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick Start Guide
Display, Hardware and Design
The phone comes with a 6.6-inch Full HD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080×2340 pixels at about 389 PPI. The display looks bright, thanks to 1000 nits brightness, which is the same as the A54, according to the company, but DXOMARK says that the peak brightness under sunlight conditions can go up to 1638 nits, which is brilliant.
It also has good colour reproduction and the screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection compared to Gorilla Glass 5 in the A54.
It has a 120Hz refresh rate screen that offers a fluid user experience with smoother animations, scrolling and gaming. Similar to the other Samsung phones, there is an Eye comfort shield that limit blue light emitted by the screen. There is also dark mode. You can choose from Vivid or Natural screen modes based on your preference, or set the white balance manually.
The phone doesn’t have DC dimming or low brightness anti-flicker mode that is present in some AMOLED screen phones in the price range. I didn’t notice any screen flicker issues in low brightness on the phone. It doesn’t have a notification LED, but there is Always on display option.
On the top, there is an 32-megapixel camera, and the earpiece is present on the top edge. The punch-hole is small and it is not intrusive.
The size bezels are huge, and the bottom bezel is bigger than that, while phones in the price range offer minimal bezels. The phone has an in-display fingerprint sensor.
Coming to the button placements, the power button and the volume rockers are present on the right side. There is nothing on the left side. The primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are on the bottom. The secondary microphone and the hybrid dual SIM slot are on the top. The phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm audio jack. The A55 also gets an aluminium frame which looks and feels premium and doesn’t slip out of your hands.
On the back, there is a triple camera module arranged in a straight line without any camera housing which we had seen in the A54. There is a single LED flash next to it. Even though the phone has a 6.6-inch screen, it is compact to hold. It is 8.2 mm thick, same as the A54, but weighs 213 grams, making it 14 grams heavier than the predecessor making due to the metal frame. It also comes in Awesome Navy colour, in addition to Ice blue. The phone IP67 ratings for dust and water resistace.
Since the back has a matte finish, it doesn’t attract fingerprints and smudges easily. The back also has a Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection. I have been using the phone without a case, and it didn’t slip out of my hands easily.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture, OIS
- 12MP ultra-wide angle camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 5MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture, LED flash
- 32MP front camera with f/2.2 aperture
The camera UI is the same as the other Samsung phones, running One UI 6.1. You can choose the 50MP option from the aspect ratio settings on the top, and the default output is 12.5MP after pixel binning. It also has Pro video, night mode, slow motion, super slo-mo, hyperlapse, dual rec, and more modes. There is Live Focus mode for portrait. You can also adjust the bokeh effect before or after the shot. There is a selfie portrait option for the front camera that uses software to blur the background. There is also a wide-angle option for the front camera, similar to other Samsung phones.
Coming to the image quality, daylight shots look as good as the A54, and the phone captures a good amount of detail, creates well exposed photos with good dynamic range and detailing, and dynamic range can further be improved enabling HDR mode from the settings, which automatically turns on HDR when needed. Based on reports, the phone uses a better 1/1.56″ Sony IMX906 sensor for the main camera. Ultra-wide shots from the 12MP camera are good in daylight, but not the best in low light.
2X macro shots from the main camera is good, and there is a dedicated macro camera mode which is average, and you have to keep it in 3-5cm distance. Live focus is good at detecting the edges. Low-light performance is better compared to A54, which can be improved further with Night mode that offers more details, but you need to keep your hand steady, since it takes two to three seconds to process. 50-megapixel shots have a good amount of details, but the image size is huge.
The 32-megapixel front camera is good in most cases. Wide-angle mode takes images in 12-megapixel resolution after pixel binning, while the normal mode takes images in 8-megapixel. Software blur in the live focus mode has good edge detection.
Check out some camera samples.
It can record videos at maximum 4K resolution at 30 fps from both front, rear and ultra-wide cameras. The rear camera can also shoot 1080p 60fps videos, but the stabilization works only in 30fps when it’s enabled in the settings.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 14, and it recently got the March 2024 security patch which installed seamlessly without the need to restart the phone. On the top of Android 14, it has the latest Samsung One UI 6.1, but it doesn’t have AI features and only has generative wallpapers. Similar to the other A series devices, Samsung has confirmed 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates for the A55 5G.
The Device maintenance option lets you manage your device’s battery life, storage, RAM usage, and security all in one place. Out of 256GB (UFS 3.1) storage in our unit, 225GB is free. Out of 12GB LPDDR4x RAM, about 11.17GB is usable and 6GB is free when default apps are running in the background.
There is also a RAM Plus feature, which uses the internal memory of the phone to expand the RAM by an extra 8GB, in addition to the existing 12GB of RAM. This is enabled automatically.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps and Google Apps, the smartphone comes with Myntra, Amazon, Snapchat, Phonepe, Spotify, Netflix, Dailyhunt, Truecaller and Microsoft apps such as Microsoft 365, OneDrive, Outlook and LinkedIn. You get the option to install apps when you are setting up the phone, which you can choose not to. It also has Samsung Wallet via NFC. The phone doesn’t have ads, but shows notifications of new Samsung products occasionally.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has an in-display fingerprint sensor that immediately unlocks the phone even when the phone is locked. It is good, but not as fast as a physical fingerprint scanner. You can add up to 3 fingerprints, and adding fingerprint is easy. It has support for Face recognition, which doesn’t work well if the lighting is poor in the room, if you are hats, or use heavy makeup. Both these are protected by Knox security.
Music Player and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default music player. It has equalizer, Dolby Atmos, UHQ upscaler, and Adapt that can be enabled from the settings. All these improve the audio when listening through earphones, and Dolby Atmos also works with speakers. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. That said, audio through earphones is good. Loudspeaker output from the stereo speakers is good as well.
The phone comes with Widevine L1 support out-of-the-box so that you can enjoy HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and other streaming apps. There is also HDR playback support for YouTube and Netflix.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The Galaxy A55 5G has support for N1, N3, N5, N7, N8, N26, N28, N40, N41, N66, N77 and N78 Network Bands in India. There is dual SIM 5G, and Airtel and Jio 5G works out of the box. There is also 4G Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and support for LTE-A or Carrier Aggregation. There is also eSIM support, but this disables the second SIM.
Other connectivity options include, Wi-Fi 802.11 6 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Wi-Fi-Calling or Vo-Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3 and GPS with GLONASS. It has support for USB OTG and NFC that works with supported payment apps.
The Galaxy A55 5G’s head SAR is 1.140 W/Kg, which is almost same as the A54 and is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) for India.
Performance and Benchmarks
The Galaxy A55 5G is the first Samsung phone to be powered by new Exynos 1480 4nm SoC. This has 4 x 2.75GHz Cortex-A78 Performance CPUs and 4 x 2.5GHz Cortex-A55 Efficiency CPUs. I didn’t face any performance issues, it was smooth.
There is also a new AMD-powered Xclipse 530 GPU for the first time in a mid-range Samsung phone, and the company says it offers 53% performance improvements compared to the Mali-G68 MP5 GPU in the Exynos 1380. Even though the performance is good, it is not optimized for gaming, since you only get low or medium graphics in games like COD. In low graphics, you get max frame rate, but in games like Genshin Impact, the frame rate is low. This is the usual thing with new Samsung Exynos chip, so we can improvements over time.
It has a 70% larger cooling solution compared to the A54, says the company, without revealing any other specifics. In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 99.1% which is good, and the temperature shot up from 30 to 38 degrees. This is like the A54, in which the temperature climbed up quickly and the phone throttled. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see from the benchmark scores, the Exynos 1480 is clearly better than the Exynos 1380. There are some phones which have flagship ships, but the scores of the Exynos 1480 are good when compared to Dimensity 8200 and Snapdragon 7s Gen 2.
Battery life
The Galaxy A55 5G retains the 5000mAh battery from the A53 and the A54. I got over 6 hours of screen on time with my daily use mostly on Wi-Fi and occasionally on 5G with 2 days of use in 120Hz refresh rate. Even though the SoT is similar, I found that the standby battery drain was less in the A54, thanks to the more power efficient chip and the optimization with the new One UI 6.1.
Samsung doesn’t offer a charger in the box, but the phone supports 25W charging. With the official 25W fast charger, it takes about 1 and half hour for 0 to 100%, and 0 to 50% took about 40 minutes. It is still less compared to the competitors.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 39,999, the Galaxy A55 5G is a good upgrade to the A54 in terms of display, performance, battery life and the build quality has also been improved, making it the best A series phone till date matching the S series’ Fan Edition. Wish Samsung had done with the 5MP macro camera.
Alternatives
The OnePlus 12R and iQOO Neo9 Pro are direct competitors at a cheaper rate, powered by a more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. If you spend more, the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE will get you a telephoto camera, but you have to compromise on the battery life.
Availability
The Galaxy A55 5G 8GB + 128GB model is priced at Rs. 39,999, 8GB + 256GB version costs Rs. 42,999 and the 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 45,999. It is already available from Samsung exclusive and partner stores, Samsung.com, and other online platforms. You can avail Rs. 3000 bank cashback with select cards.
Pros
- 120Hz AMOLED display is good
- Capable cameras
- Solid build quality, IP67 ratings
- Smooth performance
- Promise of 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates
- Excellent battery life
Cons
- Same old camera set up
- A lot of preloaded apps