Samsung Galaxy A55 5G Hands-On

Just like last year, the Galaxy A55 5G is positioned as an alternative option for those looking at the Galaxy S24 Plus 15 but do not have enough budget. This time around, Samsung made it pretty compelling that you’d get a good mid-range alternative.

It starts off with a metal frame and a glass-on-glass design that makes the Galaxy A55 look very premium. The front glass protection used is Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus while the back panel is an unspecified Gorilla Glass. It also has an IP67 Rating for dust and water resistance.

From the exterior, the Galaxy A55 takes a lot of design cues from the S24 Plus — power button and volume rocker at the right side; noise-canceling mic and SIM card slot up top; speaker grill, USB Type-C port and primary mic at the bottom along with what could be an air vent for the IP67 Rating.

Powering the Galaxy A55 is a fairly new Samsung Exynos 1480 chipset. It’s comprised of a quad-core Cortex A78 @ 2.75GHz and another quad-core Cortex A55 @ 2.05GHz paired with Samsung Xclipse 530, a GPU that utilizes AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. For OS, it comes with One Ui 6.1 based on Android 14 right out of the box.

In our synthetic benchmarks, the Exynos 1480 chip scored well in most of the tests:

Antutu Benchmark v10: 728,872
Antutu Storage: 1,731MB/s (Read), 1,009MB/s (Write), 456MBs/s | 310MB/s (Random Read | Write)
GeekBench CPU v6: 1,147 (Single Core), 3,407 (Multi-Core)
GeekBench CPU v6: 3,989 (OpenCL), 4,125 (Vulkan)
PCMark Work 3.0: 13,174

The Galaxy A55 has 5G connectivity with support for either two (2) nano SIM cards, one (1) nano SIM and one (1) microSD card up to 1TB, or one (1) nano SIM, one (1) e-SIM and a microSD card up to 1TB. You can’t configure this to 2 nano-SIM and one e-SIM, though.

The Galaxy A55 triple-camera setup is reminiscent of the older Galaxy S-series in terms of configuration and picture quality, especially with low-light scenarios or night shots.

Check out some of our sample shots in the gallery below:

The main cameras can also record 4K video at 30 frame per second (max resolution) and the low-light capabilities are also evident here. Check out some sample clips below:

In most aspects, the Samsung Galaxy A55 does not disappoint — good display, above-average performance, and nice set of cameras. We’ll be testing the battery life in our full review soon but, so far, we’re almost satisfied with the A55.

The Samsung Galaxy A55 5G will be priced at Php 24,990 for the same 8GB+256GB variant. A 128GB option will be available exclusively in Globe Telecom and Smart Communications.

You can also enjoy freebies when you buy any of these two from March 18 to April 18, 2024. Get a free Samsung Buds FE worth Php 5,490 and a free Travel Adapter worth Php 1,190 with every purchase.

Samsung Galaxy A55 5G specs:
6.6-inch Super AMOLED full HD+, 120Hz refresh rate
Samsung Exynos 1480 4nm chipset
4x Cortex A78 @ 2.75GHz, 4x Cortex A55 @ 2.05GHz
Samsung Xclipse 530 GPU
8GB RAM
128GB, 256GB internal storage
5G, dual nano-SIM/Hybrid microSD
50MP main camera
12MP ultrawide camera
5MP macro camera
32MP front camera
WiFi 6
Bluetooth 5.3
IP67 Rating dust and water resistance
One UI 6.1 (based on Android 14)
5,000mAh Li-Ion battery, 25W wired charging
Ice Blue, Lemon, Lilac and Navy Blue