Samsung has been attempting to blur the lines between flagship and mid-range Galaxy smartphones for the last couple of years, and the company may have taken the most giant leap toward that goal yet with the Galaxy A55.
The Galaxy A55 is the most exciting phone in the lineup in recent memory. Samsung has sprinkled plenty of upgrades that we expected and some that we didn't, and after 24 hours with it, I have some thoughts to offer on the Korean giant's latest premium mid-range phone.
Spoiler alert: the Galaxy A55 has positively surprised me in several ways. Right out of the box, you can feel the difference made by Samsung's decision to use more premium materials on every side. The Galaxy A54 was the first phone in the lineup with a glass back, but its plastic frame took away some of the allure.
Our initial Galaxy A55 hands-on experience is mostly positive
Samsung has fixed that by opting to use a metallic frame on the Galaxy A55, in addition to upgrading the display glass to Gorilla Glass Victus+ from the A54's Gorilla Glass 5. The result is a phone that feels no less than a flagship in the hand.
However, the bezels continue to be obnoxiously big. Samsung has also somewhat ruined the metal frame with a slightly rough finish. The rough finish covers all of the frame except the area around the volume and power buttons. Thanks to Samsung's Key Island design, the frame is raised around the buttons, and the raised part has the smooth finish that we see on Samsung's flagship smartphones.
The Galaxy A55's performance appears to benefit from optimization that was sorely lacking on its predecessors, at least as far as the out-of-the-box experience is concerned. The A55 uses a new Exynos chip–the Exynos 1480–that has a GPU designed in partnership with AMD, and it seems to be doing its part in making the user interface feel quick and smooth.
The 12GB of RAM on our review unit may be helping as well, though I'm hoping the variants with 8GB of RAM will perform similarly. I also hope game developers will work quickly to optimize their games for the Exynos 1480: since this is a new chip, Call of Duty, which remains one of the most popular games on mobile platforms, only lets you use the low graphic settings at this moment.
I also noticed some lag in the camera app. Changing the zoom level while video recording is active takes a second or two sometimes, which just isn't acceptable in a mid-range phone with specs like the A55's. Samsung will likely make optimizations with software updates, but I would have prefered it to not be an issue in the first place, especially given how the A55 otherwise performs remarkably well.
The software on this phone is also disappointing. The A55 runs Android 14 and One UI 6.1, but it lacks much of what makes One UI 6.1 on the Galaxy S24 series so good. It has none of the AI features, and it also misses out on features like wallpaper support for Always On Display. The software experience is essentially similar to what you get with Android 14 and One UI 6.0 on a Galaxy A53 or Galaxy A54.
I haven't been able to test much else on the Galaxy A55 in the short time it has been my primary device, so you will have to wait for our full review to find out what's good about this phone and what isn't. The initial vibe is a positive one, though.
