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Samsung Galaxy A55 5G Review

Charles TYK

The Samsung Galaxy A series is the company’s best-selling series due to its affordable price tag yet near flagship experience. Last year’s Galaxy A54 sold like hotcakes, and Samsung finally released the new Galaxy A55. I already had my first look here, it’s time for the full review.

Samsung Galaxy A55 5G Specs

Design

The Galaxy A55 looks pretty much like its predecessor, you still get a flat screen with thick bezels around it. The phone also has an optical in-display fingerprint sensor, which is still reasonably fast. It now sports a larger 6.6-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. As I mentioned in the first look article, Samsung has removed the silver trim around the 32MP camera cutout, making the phone look more premium.

The phone now features the new Key Island design, all sides are flat except for a slightly raised curved frame for the power button and volume rocker. The frame now has a brushed aluminum finish, just like the S23/S23+.

Display

The Galaxy A55 sports a 6.6-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and Vision Booster. It still has the best-in-class display with vivid colors. Outdoor visibility is pretty great, even under bright sunlight. With now even the S24 features an LTPO panel, I guess this is where the A55 compromised.

Performance

Powered by the latest Exynos 1480 processor, the Galaxy A55 features a powerful Xclipse 530 GPU based on AMD RDNA 2. It is available in only one configuration — 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. The overall experience is quite smooth, but playing high-end games like Genshin Impact will need to tune down the graphics settings.

Samsung has also added back the haptic feedback, a feature that has disappeared for a few years. It is not the same vibration motor as the flagship S24 series, but it’s good to have it, even though it doesn’t feel good.

Software

The Galaxy A55 runs on One UI 6.1 based on Android 14 with guaranteed up to four years of major OS updates and five years of security patches. The overall experience is similar, but the phone now comes with the newly introduced Samsung Knox Vault. Samsung Knox Vault is a hardware-based secure execution environment that’s physically isolated from the processor and memory. It can help protect the most critical data on a device, including lock screen credentials, such as PIN codes, passwords, and patterns. It also protects device encryption keys, encrypting users’ private data stored in the device. Only users with the correct lock screen credentials can access their data, even if the device is lost or stolen.

Camera

The Galaxy A55 still packs the same triple-camera setup as its predecessor — 50MP f/1.8 main camera with OIS + 12MP f/2.2 fixed-focus ultra-wide camera + 5MP f/2.4 macro camera. It also has a 32MP front camera for taking selfies.

Image quality is similar to its predecessor, which captures excellent daylight photos with a wide dynamic range. Low-light photos captured with the main camera look great with well-balanced exposures and excellent detail. The ultra-wide camera, however, took average low-light photos with washed-out colors.

Battery Life

The Galaxy A55 retains the same 5,000mAh battery as its predecessor with 25W fast charging. Unfortunately, the phone still doesn’t support wireless charging. I was able to get 2 days of battery life with more than 7 hours of screen-on-time easily. Charging the phone from 15% to full took me around an hour.

Final Words

Retailing at RM1,999, the Samsung Galaxy A55 5G follows in the same footsteps as its predecessor, it is still 80% of a flagship phone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Galaxy A55 remains the best phone priced below RM2k which has a top-class display and an impressive camera. The price might be a little steep for a mid-ranger, but I’m pretty sure you can get a great deal in the next few weeks.

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