Galaxy A55 review: A week with Samsung’s premium mid-range smartphone

Solid design

The Galaxy A55 may look like its predecessor at first glance, but it’s not. Instead of plastic, Samsung has opted for an aluminium frame that makes it feel like you are holding a Galaxy S series device.

I got the ‘Awesome Iceblue’ variant that looks similar to the blue iPhone 15. Samsung seems to have opted for Gorilla Glass Victus+ on both the front and back of the device, something I am yet to see on mid-range devices.

Samsung has also introduced a new ‘Key island’, which is basically a raised edge on the right side of the phone that houses the volume and power buttons. Initially, I dismissed it as a gimmick, but if you are someone like me who listens to music when riding a bike or just walking around, the raised edges do come in handy as they make it easy to feel the buttons when the phone is in your pocket.

The ‘Key Island’ is really useful if you use your phone when in pocket. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

While the phone does look and feel premium, the metal frame and glass back add to the weight of the phone. The Galaxy A55 weighs a whopping 213 grams without the cover, making it a bulky brick. Similar to other Samsung devices, the Galaxy A55 offers an excellent grip even if you use the phone without a cover.

However, when talking for more than 5 minutes, I noticed that it was hard to hold the phone in one hand because of the weight. Samsung seems to have done a good job of distributing the weight, but I often found myself switching hands as my wrists were paining after holding the device in one hand for a couple of minutes. If you are someone who likes lightweight phones, the Galaxy A55 is definitely not for you.

Similar to its predecessor, the Galaxy A55 offers IP67 water and dust resistance, meaning you can take it for a swim without a second thought.

Samsung has bumped up the screen size by a bit. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Big display

The Galaxy A55 has a 6.6-inch 120Hz AMOLED screen, which is a bit smaller than most devices in the price bracket. But whether it be watching videos, reading articles or just casual reel scrolling, the phone is perfectly usable both indoors and outdoors, at least for now.

I watched the first season of Vinland, and the colours and contrast are on par with other devices in the price bracket. While the phone offers an immersive experience when watching videos, I was distracted by the huge bezels which left me wondering why Samsung is unable to get rid of them.

The phone has a boxy feel and look that gives it a good grip. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Clean UI

One area where the Galaxy A series loses out to the competition is in performance, but surprisingly, this phone feels much better with software optimization and support.

Featuring the in-house developed Exynos 1480 chipset and the Xclipse 530 GPU, which is based on the AMD RDNA2 graphics architecture, the Galaxy A55 may not be the fastest phone in the segment, but it gets the work done.

As for One UI 6.1, which is based on Android 14, the software is as good as it gets. The animations are smooth, and the phone is packed with several useful features like text call, which tries to understand what the caller is saying and converts their voice from speech to text.

Just like its predecessor, the Galaxy A55 is by no means meant for serious gamers. While it can easily run the latest games, you will often find yourself limited to medium or low settings on titles like Call of Duty: Warzone or Genshin Impact. The latter does allow the phone to crank up graphics to the max, but then the game starts to drop frames and causes the phone to heat up after a few minutes. During benchmarks and long gaming sessions, the phone did heat up, but the temperature was manageable.

The Galaxy A55 comes with some pre-installed bloatware, which can be easily uninstalled. However, when setting up the device, I was kind of forced to install some apps that I didn’t want to.

I wasn’t able to complete the setup without installing apps I did not want to. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

When I tried to skip it, I found that the only way to do so was to exit the phone setup, which I did, but those apps were automatically installed afterwards. Another thing I noticed was that when I paired my Galaxy Watch 4 with the Samsung phone, it showed me ads in the form of notifications on my wrist, which was really frustrating to deal with. I don’t mind ads and pre-installed apps, but I did not expect this from a Rs 40,000 phone.

I own a couple of other Samsung products like the Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ and the Galaxy Buds, and when paired with the Galaxy A55, the ecosystem does feel a bit like Apple’s. I had no problem copying text from my tablet and pasting it on my phone, receiving and making calls from the tablet, and seamlessly switching my earbuds from one device to another.

Average cameras

The Samsung Galaxy A55 seems to have retained its predecessor’s triple-camera setup. It has a 50MP primary shooter accompanied by a 12MP ultrawide and 5MP macro lens.
The primary camera takes crisp and detailed photos during the daytime while keeping the saturation levels to a manageable level. The 12MP ultrawide shooter keeps up with the main camera in good lighting, keeping the colour shift to a minimum.

However, I felt the phone had exposure issues. When taking a photo of the same scene in under a minute, sometimes the Galaxy A55 makes the scene look dark with the next photo looking like it’s taken on a sunny day.

The shot was taken in the afternoon but it looks like it’s evening. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

The colours are close to natural, similar to other Samsung phones. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Evening time photos have good details but the phone struggles to manage light sources. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Images captures in artificial lighting are crisp and detailed. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Sunset pictures come out good but the device struggled to focus on the sun. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Another example of how the phone struggles to handle light sources even when focused. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

This picture was taken at night but has minimal noise. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

I couldn’t read the text at all. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

This picture was taken just before the full moon. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

As for low light or nighttime photography, I felt like the camera barely did the job. The images are decent if you want to share them on social media, but they often lack details. For reasons unknown, the camera did not handle light sources very well, which is something I do not expect from a device that costs this much.

The 12MP ultrawide captures good details, but as is the case with most Samsung phones, the saturation and contrast are a bit on the higher side. The Galaxy A55 has a 32MP selfie shooter, and while I don’t take selfies, the camera does manage to retain natural skin tones and takes decent photos during the daytime.

The phone can easily last you two days if you are a light user. (Image Credit: Anurag Chawake/Indian Express)

Long battery life

The Galaxy A55 packs a 5,000mAh battery that supports 25W charging. My typical usage involves streaming music for hours, playing a couple of games at night, making calls, and browsing the internet.

On light usage, the Galaxy A55 easily lasted me two days, but if you are someone who often checks their phone and is heavily reliant on mobile data, it will last you a day with around 6-7 hours of screen-on time. Also, charging the phone takes around an hour and a half, which feels pre-historic by today’s standards. I really wish Samsung at least offers 45W wired charging similar to the S-series devices.

The Galaxy A55 has a stereo speaker setup with one housed at the top while the other one is placed in the bottom grill. Outdoors, the phone is more than audible, and the audio comes out crisp and clear. The speakers were so loud that even when I was lying down on the bed with the mixer running at full speed in the background, I could hear the music without a problem.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A55?

While it is not a bad phone by any means, the Galaxy A55 does fall off in the performance department when compared to the OnePlus 12R (review) and the Vivo V30 Pro (review), which more or less cost the same. So if you are a heavy user or want a gaming phone, the Galaxy A55 might not be for you. However, if you like OneUI or want a phone that will last you almost half a decade, offers water and dust resistance and don’t mind the weight and average cameras, the Galaxy A55 might be a good choice.