Samsung launched the Galaxy M55 5G smartphone a few weeks back as the successor to the Galaxy M54 5G, which actually didn’t launch in India. This gets a similar screen, faster Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC, up to 12GB of RAM, and 45W fast charging. Is this a good for the price? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- Samsung Galaxy M55 5G 12GB RAM + 256GB in Light Green colour
- USB Type-C to C Cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick Start Guide
Display, Hardware and Design
The phone comes with a 6.7-inch Full HD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED Plus display with a resolution of 1080×2340 pixels at about 384 PPI. The display looks bright, thanks to 1000 nits brightness. It also has good colour reproduction and the screen is protected by Dragontrail protection compared to Gorilla Glass in most other Samsung phones.
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.
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 50-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. The hybrid SIM slot is present on the left. The primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top. The phone has a plastic frame with a matte finish.
On the back, there is a triple camera module arranged in a straight line without any camera housing, which we had seen in most phones. There is a single LED flash next to it. Even though the phone has a 6.7-inch screen, it is compact to hold. It is 7.8 mm thick and weighs 180 grams, even though the phone packs a 5000mAh battery. It doesn’t have IP ratings.
Since the back has a matte finish, it doesn’t attract fingerprints, but it gets scratched, so it is recommended to get a case.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture, OIS
- 8MP ultra-wide angle camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 2MP macro camera with f/2.4 aperture
- 50MP 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 good, 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. Ultra-wide shots from the 8MP camera is decent.
2X macro shots from the main camera is better instead of 2MP macro camera. Live focus is good at detecting the edges. Low-light performance could have been better since there is a lot of noise. This 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 50-megapixel front camera is good in most cases. Wide-angle mode takes images in 12.5-megapixel resolution after pixel binning. 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, and rear cameras. The ultra-wide camera can also shoot 1080p 30fps videos. The phone heats up when using the camera, so the camera shuts down after sometime.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 14, and it recently got the April 2024 security patch. 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 most other mid-range M series devices, Samsung has confirmed 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates for the M55 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 storage in our unit, 223GB is free. Out of 12GB LPDDR4x RAM, about 10.79GB 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 a lot of pre-loaded apps and Microsoft apps. 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 decent, but you don’t feel the bass since the audio is flat.
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.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The Galaxy M55 5G has support for N1, N3, N5, N7, N8, N20, N28, N38, N63, N40, N41, N77, N78 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. It doesn’t have eSIM support.
Other connectivity options include, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (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 M55 5G’s head SAR is 0.93 W/Kg, well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) for India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is one of the few phones to be powered by Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 4nm Mobile Platform. This has Qualcomm Kryo (A710-based) CPU that brings higher performance up to 2.5 GHz compared to 2.4 GHz in the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1.
There is Adreno 644 GPU, which promises up to 20% faster graphics rendering compared to 778G. Even though the GPU is powerful, the gaming experience is just average. The phone gets hot quickly when gaming and when using the camera app, as well as recording videos. Even the phone lags when using the camera. This is not fixed even after two updates the device has received.
In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 72.5% which is just average, and the temperature shot up from 33 to 40 degrees. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see from the benchmark scores, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is a good chip, but the scores are better in most other phones in the price range.
Battery life
The Galaxy M55 5G has a 5000mAh battery which we had seen in other phones in Samsung. It lasts for a day with average use, but with heavy use it lasts for less than a day.
Samsung doesn’t offer a charger in the box, but the phone supports 45W charging for the first time in the segment, and it comes with a 5A cable in the box. With the 45W fast charger, it takes about 1 and 15 minutes for 0 to 100%, and 0 to 50% took about 35 minutes. It is good, but less compared to the competitors.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 26,999, the Galaxy M55 5G is a decent phone, but not a game changer in the mid-range segment when it comes to performance. The Galaxy A35 at a slightly higher cost is a better option if you need a better user experience, and the build quality is also better.
Availability
The Samsung Galaxy M55 is priced at Rs. 26,999 for 8GB + 128GB, Rs. 29,999 for 8GB + 256GB and the 12GB+256GB model costs Rs. 32,999.
It is available from Amazon.in, and Samsung India online store as well as retail stores. There are also bank offers.
Pros
- 120Hz AMOLED display is good
- Sleek design
- Promise of 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates
- Good battery life
Cons
- Heats up quickly on intensive use, including few minutes of 4K video recording
- Average speaker quality
- A lot of preloaded apps