The Samsung Galaxy A55 is a mid-range smartphone that seamlessly blends style, performance, and innovation. Unveiled in March 2024, this device has quickly gained traction for its impressive array of features and sleek design. With a focus on delivering a premium user experience without breaking the bank, the A55 is poised to capture the hearts of tech enthusiasts and casual users alike.
At its core, the Galaxy A55 offers a harmonious fusion of cutting-edge technology and user-centric design. Its stunning Super AMOLED display, coupled with robust performance, ensures a smooth and immersive experience. The device’s versatile camera system empowers users to capture breathtaking photos and videos, while the long-lasting battery keeps you connected throughout the day.
In this comprehensive review, we delve deep into every facet of the Samsung Galaxy A55, providing an in-depth analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance. Whether you're considering upgrading your smartphone or searching for your first device, this review will equip you with the knowledge to make an informed decision.
Specs
Launch: Announced 2024, March 11. Released 2024, March 15
Display: 6.6" Super AMOLED, 120Hz, HDR10+
Processor: Exynos 1480 (powerful)
RAM: 6GB/8GB/12GB
Storage: 128GB/256GB (expandable)
Camera: Triple rear (50MP main), 32MP front
Battery: 5000mAh with 25W fast charging
Software: Android 14, One UI 6.1
Build: Glass front/back, aluminum frame, IP67 water resistant
Pros
Stunning Super AMOLED display with high refresh rate
Excellent performance
Versatile camera system
Long-lasting battery life
Sleek and durable design
IP67 water and dust resistance
Latest Android OS with One UI 6.1
Cons
No wireless charging
No 3.5mm headphone jack
Table of Contents
I. Design and Build Quality
The Samsung Galaxy A55 exudes sophistication and sturdiness from the very first touch. The phone’s sleek, ergonomic design ensures a comfortable grip, making it easy to use and navigate with one hand. Here’s a closer look at the materials and construction that contribute to the A55’s exceptional design and build quality:
Premium Materials:
Material
Benefit
Glass front and back
Visually stunning and premium aesthetic, exceptional scratch and drop resistance
Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+
Enhanced toughness against accidental bumps and scrapes
Aluminum frame
Improves structural integrity, adds a touch of sophistication
The Samsung Galaxy A55 boasts a glass front and back protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+. This combination creates a visually stunning and premium aesthetic while offering exceptional scratch and drop resistance. Gorilla Glass Victus+ is known for its toughness, providing peace of mind against accidental bumps and scrapes. The device is reinforced with a sturdy aluminum frame that enhances its structural integrity and adds a touch of sophistication. The aluminum frame contributes to the phone’s overall feeling of solidity and quality.
Meticulous Construction:
Seamless design: The glass, aluminum, and all other components of the A55 seamlessly blend together, creating a unified and aesthetically pleasing design. This meticulous attention to detail is evident throughout the phone’s construction.
IP67 rating: The A55 boasts an IP67 rating, signifying its resistance to dust and water. This means the phone can withstand dust ingress and can be submerged in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. This level of water resistance provides peace of mind in various environments, whether you’re caught in the rain or accidentally spill a drink on your phone.
Comfortable grip: The A55’s dimensions and weight are carefully considered to ensure a comfortable grip. The phone’s curved edges and smooth finish further enhance its holdability, making it easy to use for extended periods.
Color Options:
The Samsung Galaxy A55 is available in a variety of attractive colors to suit your style preferences. These include:
Iceblue: This cool and refreshing color exudes a sense of tranquility and sophistication.
Lilac: This soft and elegant color adds a touch of personality to the phone.
Navy: This classic and versatile color is perfect for those who prefer a more understated look.
Lemon: This bright and cheerful color is sure to turn heads and make a statement.
II. Display
The Samsung Galaxy A55‘s display is a visual masterpiece, boasting a Super AMOLED panel that delivers a truly immersive viewing experience. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the display’s key features:
Super AMOLED Technology:
The Samsung Galaxy A55 utilizes a Super AMOLED display, renowned for its exceptional image quality. Super AMOLED displays offer several advantages over traditional LCD displays, including:
Feature
Benefit
Superior contrast
Super AMOLED displays can achieve true blacks by completely turning off individual pixels. This results in a much higher contrast ratio compared to LCD displays, leading to deeper blacks and more vibrant colors.
Wider color gamut
Super AMOLED displays can reproduce a wider range of colors than LCD displays, resulting in a more lifelike and saturated viewing experience.
Excellent viewing angles
Super AMOLED displays offer excellent viewing angles, ensuring that colors and clarity remain consistent even when viewed from off-center positions.
Display Specifications:
Feature
Specification
Size
6.6 inches
Resolution
1080 x 2340 pixels
Pixel density
390 ppi
Refresh rate
120Hz
HDR10+ support
Yes
Maximum brightness
1010 nits (measured)
Display Quality:
The combination of Super AMOLED technology and impressive specifications translates into exceptional display quality. Here’s a closer look at the A55’s display strengths:
Vivid colors and deep blacks: As mentioned earlier, the Super AMOLED panel delivers vibrant colors and deep blacks, resulting in a stunning and immersive viewing experience.
Sharp and crisp visuals: The display’s high resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels and a pixel density of 390 ppi ensure sharp and crisp visuals, making text, images, and videos appear clear and detailed.
Smooth and responsive experience: The 120Hz refresh rate provides a buttery-smooth scrolling and animation experience. This is particularly noticeable when gaming, browsing the web, or navigating the user interface.
HDR content enhancement: HDR10+ support allows the display to showcase HDR content with improved contrast, wider color gamuts, and enhanced brightness, delivering a more realistic and visually stunning viewing experience.
Excellent outdoor visibility: The display’s high maximum brightness of 1010 nits (measured) ensures excellent outdoor visibility, even on bright sunny days.
The Samsung Galaxy A55‘s display is a true standout feature. It delivers exceptional image quality, a smooth and responsive experience, and excellent outdoor visibility, making it ideal for multimedia consumption, gaming, and everyday use.
III. Performance
The Samsung Galaxy A55 delivers commendable performance, ensuring a smooth and responsive user experience for everyday tasks and even demanding applications. Here’s a closer look at the hardware that powers this device:
Chipset:
The Samsung Galaxy A55 is equipped with the Exynos 1480 chipset, manufactured using a 4nm process. This advanced chipset offers significant improvements in performance and efficiency compared to its predecessors.
CPU: The Exynos 1480 features an octa-core CPU configuration, consisting of:
Four high-performance Cortex-A78 cores for demanding tasks and applications.
Four energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores for handling background tasks and improving battery life.
GPU: The integrated Xclipse 530 GPU is designed to handle graphics processing efficiently, ensuring a smooth experience for gaming, video playback, and other graphics-intensive tasks.
RAM and Storage:
The Samsung Galaxy A55 is available in various RAM and storage configurations, allowing you to choose the option that best suits your needs:
RAM
Storage
6GB or 8GB
128GB, 256GB
The higher RAM capacity ensures smoother multitasking and app switching, while the ample storage options provide sufficient space for your apps, photos, videos, and other files.
Benchmark Scores:
Several benchmark tests have been conducted on the Samsung Galaxy A55, revealing its impressive performance capabilities. Here’s a glimpse into some benchmark scores:
AnTuTu: Scores around 635,598 (v9) and 726,158 (v10) depending on the RAM variant.
GeekBench: Scores around 3259 (v5) and 3350 (v6) for single-core and multi-core performance, respectively.
These benchmark scores indicate that the Galaxy A55 can handle everyday tasks and applications with ease, and it even possesses the capability to run more demanding games and applications without significant slowdowns.
Real-world Performance:
In real-world usage scenarios, the Galaxy A55 lives up to its benchmark scores. Here’s what you can expect:
Smooth multitasking: The combination of a powerful chipset and ample RAM ensures smooth multitasking between apps. You can seamlessly switch between apps, browse the web, and manage social media without experiencing lag or stutter.
Gaming: The A55 can handle most popular games with ease, thanks to the Xclipse 530 GPU. You can expect smooth gameplay at moderate to high graphics settings in popular titles.
Fast app launch and loading times: Apps launch quickly and load content efficiently, thanks to the combination of a powerful processor and fast storage.
Overall responsiveness: The user interface is responsive and lag-free, providing a pleasant user experience.
The Samsung Galaxy A55‘s performance is a testament to its well-balanced hardware configuration. It delivers exceptional performance for everyday tasks and can even handle more demanding applications with ease. Whether you’re a casual user or a power user, the A55 is unlikely to disappoint.
IV. Camera
The Samsung Galaxy A55 boasts a versatile triple-camera system that empowers users to capture stunning photos and videos. Here’s a breakdown of its camera capabilities:
50MP Main Camera: The primary sensor is a 50MP shooter with an f/1.8 aperture, PDAF, and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). This combination ensures sharp, detailed images, even in low-light conditions. OIS helps reduce camera shake, resulting in sharper handheld shots.
12MP Ultrawide Camera: The 12MP ultrawide lens offers a 123-degree field of view, perfect for capturing expansive landscapes and group photos. It allows you to fit more into the frame without distortion.
5MP Macro Camera: The 5MP macro lens enables you to capture intricate details of small objects. It allows you to get up close and personal with your subjects, revealing hidden textures and patterns.
Camera Features
The A55’s camera app is packed with features to enhance your photography experience:
Night mode: This mode improves image quality in low-light conditions by capturing multiple frames and combining them to create a brighter and more detailed image.
Portrait mode: This mode applies a bokeh effect to the background, blurring it to create a professional-looking portrait with the subject in sharp focus.
Pro mode: This mode gives you manual control over camera settings like exposure, ISO, and white balance, allowing you to experiment with different photographic styles.
Video recording: The A55 can capture high-quality videos in 4K resolution at 30fps and 1080p at 30/60fps.
Selfie Camera
The front-facing camera is a 32MP shooter with an f/2.2 aperture. It captures detailed selfies with accurate colors and skin tones. You can also record 4K videos with the front camera for high-quality vlogs and video calls.
Image Quality
The Galaxy A55 generally produces impressive image quality. The main camera captures vibrant colors, good dynamic range, and sufficient detail. The ultrawide camera is useful for capturing wide shots, although image quality can be slightly compromised compared to the main camera. The macro camera is decent for its purpose, allowing you to capture close-up shots with reasonable detail.
The Samsung Galaxy A55‘s camera system is a versatile tool that delivers impressive results for most users. Whether you’re capturing everyday moments or aiming for more creative shots, the A55 has you covered.
V. Battery Life
The Samsung Galaxy A55 is equipped with a long-lasting 5000mAh battery. This ensures that you can comfortably stay connected throughout the day with moderate usage. Even with heavy use, the device should last through a day on a single charge.
Battery Usage Scenarios:
The A55’s battery performance can vary depending on your usage patterns. Here’s a general idea of what you can expect:
Usage
Battery Life
Moderate usage (browsing the web, social media, occasional videos, calls)
Full day
Heavy usage (gaming, streaming videos, resource-intensive apps)
Most of the day
Charging:
The Galaxy A55 supports 25W wired charging. This allows you to quickly replenish the battery when needed. While wireless charging is not supported, fast wired charging compensates for this omission.
Charging time: The exact charging time will vary depending on the charger you use. However, with a 25W charger, you can expect to charge the battery from 0 to 50% in around 30 minutes.
Tips for Extending Battery Life:
Here are some tips to help you extend the battery life of your Samsung Galaxy A55:
Adjust screen brightness: Reducing the screen brightness can significantly improve battery life. The A55 has an adaptive brightness feature that can help you optimize brightness levels.
Close unused apps: Make sure to close apps you’re not actively using to prevent them from draining battery power in the background.
Use battery-saving modes: The A55 offers different battery-saving modes that can help you conserve battery life when needed. These modes reduce background activity and limit certain features.
Enable dark mode: Using dark mode can also help improve battery life, especially on AMOLED displays like the one on the A55.
The Samsung Galaxy A55‘s battery life is a strong point. The 5000mAh battery provides ample power for most users, and the 25W wired charging ensures you can quickly recharge when needed. By following the tips mentioned above, you can further optimize the battery life of your device.
VI. Software
The Galaxy A55 runs on Android 14 with Samsung’s One UI 6.1 skin on top. One UI offers a clean, intuitive interface with a focus on usability and customization. The software is packed with features, including a dark mode, split-screen multitasking, and advanced gesture controls.
Samsung’s commitment to software updates ensures that the A55 will receive timely security patches and feature upgrades, keeping your device up-to-date and secure.
One UI 6.1 Features:
Clean and intuitive interface: One UI prioritizes a clean and uncluttered interface, making it easy to navigate and find the features you need.
Customization options: One UI offers a wide range of customization options, allowing you to personalize the look and feel of your device to match your preferences.
Dark mode: This feature reduces eye strain in low-light conditions and can also help improve battery life.
Split-screen multitasking: Multitask efficiently by running two apps simultaneously side-by-side on the screen.
Advanced gesture controls: Navigate your device using intuitive gestures, such as swiping and pinching.
Samsung DeX: This feature allows you to connect your phone to a monitor or TV and use it like a desktop computer.
Samsung Health: This comprehensive health and wellness app tracks your fitness activities, sleep patterns, and stress levels.
Software Updates:
Samsung has a strong track record of providing software updates for its devices. The Galaxy A55 is expected to receive regular security updates and major Android updates for several years, ensuring your device remains protected and up-to-date.
The Samsung Galaxy A55‘s software experience is excellent. One UI 6.1 offers a user-friendly and feature-rich interface, and Samsung’s commitment to software updates ensures your device stays up-to-date and secure.
VII. Features
The Samsung Galaxy A55 offers a range of features designed to enhance your smartphone experience. Let’s explore some of the key features:
Security
In-display fingerprint sensor: Conveniently unlock your phone with your fingerprint, securely embedded within the display.
Facial recognition: Quickly and securely unlock your device with facial recognition technology.
Connectivity
Wi-Fi 6: Enjoy faster and more stable wireless connections with Wi-Fi 6 support.
Bluetooth 5.3: Connect seamlessly to wireless headphones, speakers, and other devices with Bluetooth 5.3 technology.
NFC: Make contactless payments and share data with other NFC-enabled devices.
Additional Features
IP67 rating: The A55 is resistant to dust and water, offering protection against accidental spills and splashes.
Stereo speakers: Immerse yourself in rich and balanced sound with the device’s stereo speaker setup.
Samsung Pay: Make secure and convenient payments with Samsung Pay.
Samsung Ecosystem Integration
The Galaxy A55 seamlessly integrates with other Samsung devices and services, enhancing your overall user experience.
SmartThings: Control your smart home devices directly from your phone.
Samsung Health: Track your fitness goals, monitor your sleep, and manage your overall well-being.
These are just some of the features that the Samsung Galaxy A55 offers. The device provides a comprehensive package designed to meet the needs of modern smartphone users.
Beyond Expectations: A Fitting Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy A55 surpasses expectations for a mid-range smartphone. It delivers a captivating visual experience with its stunning Super AMOLED display and smooth 120Hz refresh rate. The device’s performance is commendable, effortlessly handling everyday tasks and even demanding applications. The versatile camera system empowers users to capture high-quality photos and videos in various lighting conditions. The long-lasting battery life ensures you can stay connected throughout the day, while the sleek and durable design exudes a premium feel.
Samsung’s commitment to software updates guarantees the A55 remains secure and up-to-date. The inclusion of features like an in-display fingerprint sensor, NFC, and Wi-Fi 6 further enhances the user experience. While the lack of wireless charging and a 3.5mm headphone jack might be drawbacks for some users, the A55’s strengths far outweigh these minor shortcomings.
In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy A55 is an exceptional mid-range smartphone that offers exceptional value for money. It caters to a wide range of users, from casual users to content creators. If you’re seeking a feature-packed device that delivers a premium experience without breaking the bank, the Galaxy A55 is a compelling choice.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: How long does the battery last on the Samsung Galaxy A55? A: With moderate usage, the Galaxy A55’s 5000mAh battery can easily last a full day. Even with heavy use, you can expect to comfortably get through a day on a single charge.
Q: Does the Samsung Galaxy A55 support expandable storage? A: Yes, the Galaxy A55 supports expandable storage via microSDXC. This allows you to expand the device’s storage capacity to suit your needs.
Q: What are the color options available for the Samsung Galaxy A55? A: The Samsung Galaxy A55 is available in four attractive colors: Iceblue, Lilac, Navy, and Lemon.
Q: Is the Samsung Galaxy A55 water-resistant? A: Yes, the Galaxy A55 boasts an IP67 rating, signifying its resistance to dust and water immersion for up to 1 meter for 30 minutes.
Q: Does the Samsung Galaxy A55 have a fingerprint sensor? A: Yes, the Galaxy A55 features an in-display fingerprint sensor for secure and convenient unlocking.