Design, build quality, handling

At first glance, the Galaxy A55 looks almost identical to the A54, but some subtle changes have made it feel like a different phone in hand, and we mean that mostly positively.

The front glass is now Gorilla Glass Victus+. That's a welcome upgrade from last year's model, which had a plastic frame and dated Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The handset is still IP67-certified against water and dust. The back uses a more regular Gorilla Glass, and Samsung hasn't revealed which type.

The back is painted in either Iceblue, Lilac, Navy (the one shown in our photos) or Lemon. For some reason, the Navy color looks black in the renders..

With the flat aluminum side frame and the slightly larger camera lenses on the back, the device feels a lot like the Galaxy S24. If it wasn't for the size, we could have easily mistaken it in a blind test. The slightly elevated area around the power key and the volume rocker gives it away.

Samsung Galaxy A55

On the other hand, some may find the device a bit awkward to hold due to the sharp edges where the frame meets the front and back panels. But no matter the side frame, button placement and fingerprint reader position are well thought out. Everything is within reach.

Samsung Galaxy A55

Unfortunately, that's all the good we could say about the fingerprint reader. It has been a while since we last used such an unreliable scanner. We even tried creating two different entries with the same fingertip, and it was still difficult to read correctly.

Is the Galaxy A55 the most comfortable design we've tried? Far from it. But is it one of the best in terms of overall feel and materials? It's right up there with the best.

Slightly larger 120Hz OLED

This year's Galaxy A55 basically borrows the A54's display and adds 0.2" on top. The A55 is now built around a 6.6-inch OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and regular old 1080 x 2340 pixels resolution. The panel also supports HDR10+ and has the necessary Widevine L1 certification for high-quality, HDR-enabled streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Despite its modern features, the display doesn't have the modern looks for 2024. The 2024 trend is toward trimming bezels, and Samsung might have missed the memo. Some competitors, including even cheaper Redmi Note 13 phones, have visibly thinner bezels. Surely, it isn't a deal-breaker, and some people wouldn't mind the bezels, but it's something worth noting.

Back to the actual substance - the Galaxy A55's display performance hasn't changed coming from the A54. We got up to 1,010 nits of maximum brightness in auto mode, while manual control can only get you to 446 nits.

Anything above 1,000 nits is pretty solid for this price bracket and will provide good enough sunlight legibility. However, it would be unfair not to note that some cheaper phones beat Samsung at its own game and offer more than 1,400 nits of brightness.

Refresh rate

Refresh rate control is pretty standard. You have two options - Adaptive and Standard. The latter puts a cap at 60Hz, while Adaptive will try to keep the refresh rate at 120Hz in most scenarios. However, when showing static images or playing video, the display will dial down to 60Hz.

Battery life

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

The Galaxy A55 uses the same 5,000 mAh battery as its predecessors, but it's running a new Exynos 1480 chipset, which promises improved efficiency. However, we have to take into account the display, which is now 0.2" larger and could contribute to increased power consumption.

Yet, we see a significant improvement in battery life over the Galaxy A54. There are notable improvements in all tests except gaming.

The new Galaxy A55 achieves an Active Use Score of 13:27h, which is very good. Web browsing and call time see improvements, but our video streaming test is by far the biggest upgrade compared to last year's model.

Compared to its rivals, the Galaxy A55 clearly does well, beating each and everyone except for the Nothing Phone (2a). The Exynos 1480 seems to be spot on for power efficiency.

Charging speed

The charging speed has stayed the same as the Galaxy A55 still relies on the 25-watt Power Delivery protocol, which isn't very competitive in its price bracket. It takes about 1 hour and 3 minutes to complete a full charging cycle, while a 30-minute charge would only bring the battery to 55%.

As you can see from the chart below, plenty of other similarly priced phones outpace the Galaxy A55 by a good margin and come with the appropriate charger in the box, too.

You'd have to buy a 25W Samsung charger separately or a third-party 25W PD 3.0, PPS-capable brick to get the most out of the charging.

Speakers

Like its predecessors, the Galaxy A55 features a hybrid stereo speakers setup, meaning it has a main, downward-facing speaker and one that also acts as an earpiece. Naturally, there's a significant discrepancy in loudness between the two speakers, but Samsung managed to narrow the gap. The bottom-firing speaker is still louder, but not by much.

We don't know whether the A55 uses the same speakers as the A54, but they are tuned differently now and slightly louder. A score of -25.6 LUFS earns the Galaxy A55 a "Very Good" rating in terms of loudness.

Quality-wise, the speakers leave a bit more to be desired from the high-frequency sounds at maximum or near-maximum volume, but the bass is prominent and the vocals sound way cleaner than before. In fact, the A54 sounds muffled compared to the A55, so it will most likely be a great option for watching movies or listening to podcasts without headphones.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

One UI 6.1 based on Android 14

The Samsung Galaxy A55 runs on the latest Android 14 out of the box with Samsung's own One UI 6.1 on top.

Samsung has promised up to 4 years of major OS updates and 5 years of security patches to the Galaxy A55. That's a big commitment on Samsung's behalf and it's more than most competitors have to offer on their midrangers.

Screenshots from One UI 6.1

One UI 6.1 was introduced with the new Galaxy S24 series. The Galaxy A55 gets almost all of the features Samsung's custom overlay has to offer. What's missing are the new Galaxy AI features, which are reserved to the flagships.

We've covered the latest version of One UI extensively in our dedicated review.

Benchmarks and sustained performance

Last year's Galaxy A54 was powered by the Exynos 1390 chip, and now the A55 gets a newer, more powerful Exynos 1480 chipset based on the 4nm manufacturing process.

The new Exynos 1480 features the same 4x Cortex-A78 and 4x Cortex-A55 combo, but the main four cores are clocked higher this time around. The cluster of four Cortex-A78 cores ticks at 2.7 GHz, while the Cortex-A55 cluster remains at 2.0 GHz. The Mali-G88 MP5 GPU, however, has been replaced by the Xclipse 530 GPU, co-developed with AMD and based on the RDNA 2 architecture.

When it comes to memory, the Galaxy A55 has three configurations - 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB and 12GB/256GB. We have the entry-level 8GB/128GB version for this review.

Now, without further ado, let's see how the new Exynos 1480 fares against the competition from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

Performance-wise, the Exynos 1480 appears to be quite competitive. It demonstrates good CPU, GPU and combined performance. It's also a big upgrade over the older Exynos 1380 and falls short only to the higher-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/Exynos 2200-powered Samsung Galaxy S23 FE and the Xiaomi 13T's Dimensity 8200 Ultra SoC.

We are also surprised to see the Galaxy A55 scoring excellently in our stress test. In both, the CPU and GPU stress test, the device maintained near-maximum performance and the handset itself didn't feel extremely hot either.

CPU and GPU throttling tests

The excellent thermal stability would ensure a fluent gaming experience even during long sessions and shows that Samsung has done a much better job at designing the updated Exynos 1480 chip.

Solid triple-camera setup on the back

The camera setup from the Galaxy A54 remains unchanged. We have a 50MP main camera aided by a 12MP ultrawide camera and a 5MP dedicated macro unit. The selfie shooter is once again 32MP.

• Wide (main): 50 MP Sony IMX906, f/1.8, 1/1.56", PDAF, OIS; 2160p@30fps
• Ultra wide angle: 12 MP Sony IMX258, f/2.2, 123˚ (ultrawide), 1/3.06", 1.12µm, fixed focus; 2160p@30fps
• Macro: 5 MP, f/2.4, fixed focus.
• Front camera: 13 MP Sony IMX616, f/2.2, 1/2.74", 0.8µm, fixed focus; 2160p@30fps

We like that Samsung uses 12MP ultrawide sensors for its midrangers, as they produce far superior stills compared to their commonly used 8MP counterparts. The main sensor is also optically stabilized, which is a nice bonus to consider.

Daylight photos

Main camera

Despite using the same camera hardware as last year's Galaxy A54, the A55 demonstrates slightly different processing of stills. The main camera produces nice daylight photos with plenty of detail and a touch of additional sharpness. That last bit is the main difference between the A54 and A55. The latter seems to produce sharper and cleaner overall images. On the other hand, the new rendition offers a more conservative approach to colors - they are now closer to natural but still lively, especially foliage and sky.

Main camera daylight samples

50MP daylight samples

Dynamic range is excellent, contrast is good, exposure is accurate, and color temperature is on point, but we tend to see a bit of noise at times in homogeneous areas like the sky or when shooting stills indoors. The barely noticeable noise aside, the device maintains good quality indoors.

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

2x zoom

Samsung messed up the processing on this one. For some reason, last year's 2x zoom photos looked better. This year, the Galaxy A55 offers subpar 2x zoom crop mode as noise is quite obvious, and everything looks fuzzy. We no longer see those sharp and detailed stills from the 1x mode. Colors, contrast, dynamic range, etc. are the same, though.

2x zoom daylight samples

Ultrawide camera

Samsung's ultrawide cameras are generally impressive, and the 12MP unit on Galaxy A55 is no exception. In fact, the A55 blows past most of its competitors when comparing ultrawide cameras. We found the stills to be solid in most aspects - sharpness and detail are excellent, colors are on point, contrast is good and we don't see any signs of color fringing either.

Ultrawide daylight samples

Cracks begin to show in high-contrast scenes and indoors, though. When ambient light isn't sufficient, sharpness drops and noise starts to creep in. Dynamic range could also see some improvement due to the clipped highlights outside and crushed shadows inside. Nevertheless, those are minor problems, especially compared to the glaring issues most ultrawide cameras have in the same price bracket.

Low-light photos

Main camera

Nighttime camera performance is mostly solid, mainly because the system often triggers the dedicated Night mode.

When the Night mode kicks in, you can enjoy natural-looking, detailed, sharp, and clean photos. Contrast and colors are also on point.

Low-light main camera samples

The samples we took without the Night mode can be easily distinguished - they lack contrast, have clipped highlights and have muted colors.

2x zoom

To our surprise, 2x zoom mode takes decent enough nighttime photos, with rendering that's very similar to the standard 1x mode, but with a bit more noise and softer.

Low-light 2x zoom camera samples

Ultrawide camera

We noticed that the camera app always triggered the Night mode. However, the samples are far from ideal - most of them are quite noisy and soft, with limited dynamic range. Still, they are a tad better than most ultrawide cameras in the price range.

Low-light ultrawide camera samples

Selfies

The selfies are excellent. They are detailed and relatively sharp (as long as the lighting conditions are optimal), and the colors look natural. The HDR algorithm is doing a good job of maintaining exposure on the subject's face without blowing up the background.

Selfies

Video recording

The Galaxy A55's video recording capabilities haven't changed much. The device can still record 2160p@30fps videos with EIS using the main camera. The ultrawide unit is also capable of recording 4K@30fps footage, which isn't something you'd normally see on a budget phone. Notably, last year's model had EIS only at up to 1080p videos, so stabilizing 2160p videos is a welcome upgrade.

The 4K footage with the main camera looks very inviting - punchy colors, good contrast, plenty of fine detail and wide dynamic range. While sharp, the clip we took suggests that Samsung has added a bit of artificial sharpening, which you can notice on the trees and grass. There's a little bit of noise in there as well. But generally, we like the video recording capabilities.

Understandably, the ultrawide camera's video is softer and less detailed but offers a similar rendition. The dynamic range is slightly narrower (notice the clipped white cars and buildings in the distance), but we can let that one slide. Overall, the 4K footage coming out of the ultrawide camera is almost impressive.

The nighttime video is surprisingly good. We find it somewhat clean, with plenty of contrast, good colors and plenty of detail, even in the shadows. However, the highlights are visibly overexposed, which is probably the reason why the shadows have so much detail in them as well.

The stabilized 4K footage looks pretty solid. In fact, it's one of the best EIS we've seen in this price range.

Video samples playlist

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

Competition

The Samsung Galaxy A5x lineup is perhaps one of the most competitive series in the brand's portfolio. However, we feel like they've lost their mojo with the Galaxy A55. Sure, it has some compelling upgrades this year, like battery life and chipset, but are they enough to keep the Galaxy A5x series afloat?

As always, it's a bit more nuanced than this. If you are in the market for strictly a Samsung phone, there are quite a few options around the same price point. The Galaxy A54 is still a viable option, given that it's essentially the same phone but with shorter battery life and a less powerful Exynos 1380. And it's more than €100 cheaper too.

The more recent Galaxy A35 is a very close match to last year's Galaxy A54 too, but it doesn't come cheap. In a direct comparison between the A35 and the A55, though, the latter is slightly better in almost every aspect - performance, battery life, camera and build quality. It's up to you to decide whether the €100 difference is justifiable for a "slightly better" user experience.

Samsung Galaxy A54 • Samsung Galaxy A35 • Samsung Galaxy S23 FE

Continuing with the homegrown competition, the new Galaxy A55 is priced close to the Galaxy S23 FE. Dangerously close, even. And as the name implies, the Galaxy S23 FE is an affordable flagship, far from the Galaxy A55's true mid-range nature. The only real advantage the Galaxy A55 has over its higher-end sibling is battery life. The Galaxy A55 just wipes the floor with the S23 FE. However, it's hard to overlook other aspects and features - better display, faster chipset, better camera experience (has 3x telephoto too), wireless charging, as well as other neat tidbits like Samsung DeX, reverse charging, better ingress protection, etc. The Galaxy S23 FE is objectively the better phone.

Xiaomi 13T • Nothing Phone (2a)

Looking for competition outside Samsung's camp, we find the Xiaomi 13T as an excellent alternative. The device undercuts the Galaxy A55 in terms of pricing and offers objectively better hardware too. Additionally, Xiaomi is offering at least four years of major OS updates for its Xiaomi 13T series, so even if it's a last-year handset, the vanilla 13T will be relevant for at least a couple of years. It also has a better display, twice the storage by default, a snappier chipset, a better camera system with a telephoto unit, faster charging and similar battery life. It's not as good as the Galaxy A55's, but it's still close enough not to sway you in either direction.

Another popular midranger worth mentioning is the Nothing Phone (2a). This one is significantly cheaper, but matches the Galaxy A55's class better. Moreover, it's the only phone on this list that surpasses the Galaxy A55 in terms of battery life. It has the same performance as the Galaxy A55 and also a similar camera experience and display, but it charges faster and offers a standout design. However, that last bit may be polarizing. Either way, it is cheaper, so it's definitely worth considering. At launch, the Galaxy A55 is about €140 more expensive.

Verdict

We had high hopes for the Galaxy A55, but it appears competition is catching up. The newer A55 tries to ride on the success of its predecessors, but the modest upgrades this year make it hard to justify the high launch price. We are impressed by the battery life; we liked the new, more premium design; raw performance is good along with sustained performance, and we are generally happy with the camera all-around, including selfies and video recording. Display quality is competitive, although it's not hard to find bright 120Hz OLEDs nowadays.

In the end, it's the price tag that keeps us from recommending the A55 outright. There are many sensible options around the same price point and even handsets at a much lower price with similar, if not better, user experience. And while it may sound like nit-picking, small things add up. For instance, we are very disappointed by the fingerprint reader; we are not fans of the virtual proximity sensor, and the thick screen bezels are off-putting.

All in all, the Galaxy A55 is a good phone, but not at this price. We suspect other cheaper or similarly priced devices from Samsung itself will cannibalize Galaxy A55 sales unless its price drops significantly in the coming months. Then, it would be a rather easy recommendation.

Pros

• Sturdy build with Gorilla Glass Victus+, aluminum frame, IP67 rating.
• Great battery life.
• Dependable camera performance, excellent videos.
• Good performance for this price range and great thermal behavior.
• Stereo speakers with good quality.
• One of the few devices with microSD slot in this price range.
• Polished One UI 6.1, entitled to at least 4 years of OS upgrades.

Cons

• No charger in the box and not very fast to charge.
• Unreliable fingerprint reader performance.
• Thick display bezels.
• Virtual proximity sensor.