Samsung Galaxy A55 Review – Awesome and a worthy comeback

The Samsung Galaxy A55 is one of the latest refresh from the A series line-up addressing modern needs and quite an update from some of the hardware standpoint. With that being said, the Galaxy A55 is also released alongside with Galaxy A35 also with some changes of internals and design between the two, but shall look similar and some of our writeup within this article is relatable to it.

We will have a full review here on this along with our final verdict and view on the Galaxy A55. Click here too if you have not read our unboxing and first impression.

Design

Upon initial glance on the phone, I can confirm that this is quite similar to the Samsung Galaxy A54 from last year and bears a strong resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE or perhaps even the Galaxy S23+. Nevertheless, there are some alterations dispersed throughout. Initially, the material is aluminum for the Galaxy A55 frame, presenting a brushed metal design. The rear is effectively shielded by Corning Gorilla Glass, while the front display is secured by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+, which, although not the most recent, still provides significant protection compared to previous versions. The positioning of the buttons is conveniently placed on the right side for easy access to power and volume controls, and below are the usual USB C ports for charging and data, along with down firing speakers that work together with the earpiece. All of these may appear to be simple features, but they are still crucial for ensuring that users can easily navigate and control their smartphones.

Depending on what color you choose, the materials remain the same, the Awesome Lilac color that we got does shines with a rainbow hue when it is under light source or under the sun, which gave a fresh new looks to it that is kind of mesmerizing yet it is a sign that show it’s youthful feeling to it, and to the user as well. The Samsung Galaxy A55 is also IP67 water and dust resistant, so if it is rain or an accidental drop to shallow water should not be an issue for this phone.

Display & Audio

Display wise, the Samsung Galaxy A55 has a dynamic Super AMOLED 6.6 inch, 120Hz refresh rate display that dials down to 60hz. While this is not the lowest that we have seen on smartphone, judging from the quality factor and price, I think this is perfectly reasonable and besides that, the brightness can peak up to 1000nits in Vision Booster automatic mode which is well enough and still visible under sunlight with some minor washed out contrast to it, and that is much expected given the glaring material used on the glass. Otherwise on most situations, the display can perform well with good color display, fast response rate and I have no complains over the touch response latency.

Audio wise, we did notice a decent minor improvement over last year’s Galaxy A54 which still carries a similar loudness with the dual speakers, but the A55 delivers a slightly punchier audio quality out from it, in part this is also thanks to the inclusion of the Dolby Atmos inside and additional equalizer customisation should you wanted to do that, to add there is also an adapt sound tuning with your favorite headphones or any earbuds to match your hearing aid, so that you can hear comfortably, especially good for all ages as well.

Camera

There is no telephoto lens or super far zoom stuff in here, instead what you will get is still a respectable rear camera setup consisting of a 50MP main lens with PDAF and OIS, followed by a 12MP wide lens, and a 5MP Macro lens. The front selfie camera is powered by a single 32MP wide angle camera. Both front and rear camera supports portrait mode.

Day Time Shots

Night Time shots

This time around although it might look similar to the last year’s model camera setup, but there are several improvement that has been made. The capture speed is slightly faster this time, and there is lesser lag between time of taking picture as well, all I can say this is much contributed from the faster processor embedded in the phone, where it allows faster responses and post generated images can come out real quick this time. All of these is also part of the new integration of the combined big pixels within the camera sensors which allows more light to be absorbed, resulting in better details. Real world use case wise, all came out pretty good and accurate as expected with minor miss off on edges of the captures but still remains sharp and vibrant whole the noise are kept to very low level even during night shots. One should try the macro shots too, it’s a tiny bit soft, but still pretty well detailed.

The Samsung Galaxy A55 features both OIS and VDIS support natively over 4K video recording, however limited to 30FPS while 1080P can go up to 60FPS, which in my opinion with experience much stable and good framerate pacing during the course of the recording.

Performance, Software, Experience

The Samsung Galaxy A55 is among one of the A series phone for the first time came with the newer mid range Exynos 1480 octa core SOC with 12GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 256GB of UFS internal storage. Should you need extra space, fortunately the Galaxy A55 still has the option to expand the storage via MircoSD card up to 2TB, and I would recommend higher speed card especially if you are keeping bunch of media files such as images and videos. Another welcome addition is the WiFi speed which now supports up to AX speeds with Bluetooth 5.3. Such improvement gives better download and upload speed as well as support over newer routers with MiMo.

The GPU included is the XClipse 530, this is also the first in the Galaxy A series that has AMD RDNA2 in it, which gives a positive edge over AI, NPU and Games, this time around, it holds on quite steadily on heavier demanding games like Genshin Impact with longer play time over 35 minutes before hitting throttle point, this is good as a gaming and graphical intensive uses, which also includes some editing tasks.

Software and OS wise, the Galaxy A55 came with OneUI 6, with Android 14. Till date there is no indicator whether it will include Galaxy AI or not towards any of the A series lineup. However Samsung does offers 4 versions of Android update with 5 years of security patches ensuring absolute peace of mind security and provides continuous stability with performance. Since the phone is equipped with 5000MaH battery, basically it can last you easily over a day and slightly more over most typical usage. Apart from that, the Galaxy A55 has all of the essentials from both OneUI and Android 14, from adaptive battery settings, themes, multi window, split screen and many more, honestly the A55 provided more than any features that is also available on premium smartphone, which is an added advantage.

Samsung Knox

This could be a mid range device, but Samsung puts in the signature Samsung Knox to the phone. Basically Samsung Knox is a one stop security solution that allows Pin, Pattern or Password to be stored in an isolated vault that is separated from the main OS, including OneUI also, this is to ensure proper encryptions were done instantly and this keeps all needed personal data is secured. This works without the user intervention and in many cases, Knox will identify which applications would need the additional protection, for example banking and shopping apps, as well as games that has IAP while on the enterprise side, that includes authentications towards the related apps. This is also a move to protect the phone from any malicious malware, viruses and phishing attempts. At this point of writing, Knox is available on A Series Galaxy Devices, S Series and Tablets from Samsung.

Benchmarks

Here are the benchmarks for reference, suffice to say, the Galaxy A55 now stands around all the tested device with good scores and

Technical Specifications

Verdict, Pricing, Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy A55 marks a worthy upgrade from it’s previous iteration and this time around, it shine above even some of the competitions out with their continuous improvement over their Samsung’s Exynos SOC that this time, brings in a very comparable performance against other phone within the same segment along with some of the camera optimization that is suited for today’s photography needs. Hence with a price of RM1999 and also commitment of ensured security enhancement from Samsung’s Knox, this is another worth a purchase if you are looking for an upgrade.

For more information on the Samsung Galaxy A55, click here to find out.