Samsung Galaxy A55 5G – First Impressions

While the Samsung Galaxy S24 series grabs headlines, it’s actually the Galaxy A series that sells the most, making it the real winner in terms of popularity.

Samsung launched the Samsung Galaxy A55 5G, which succeeds the Galaxy A54 5G alongside the Galaxy A35 5G. There are a lot of new upgrades over its predecessor that make the device even more premium.
Here are my first impressions of the device, followed by a full review very soon.

Unboxing

Design

You can easily distinguish its Samsung with its signature individual camera bumps and minimalist rear design. A small detail, the rear camera’ brim is color-coded, the same as the body color.

The Samsung Galaxy A55 5G is bigger now with its display bumped from 6.4-inch to 6.6-inch. Another premium touch update is the use of an aluminum flat frame sandwiched with robust Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+.

All the sides are flat except for a slightly raised curved frame for the power button and volume rockers.

Features a stereo dual speaker with Dolby Atmos support and has an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance. Keeping the lights on is the same 5,000 mAh battery with support of 25W Samsung Adaptive Fast Charging.

The Samsung Galaxy A55 5G is offered in three color options Awesome IceBlue, Awesome Navy, and Awesome Lilac.

Display

As mentioned earlier, the Galaxy A55 5G has a slightly bigger display at 6.6-inch Super AMOLED while having the same Full HD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and the same 1,000 nits peak brightness featuring Vision Booster that increases visibility under harsh sunlight without degrading much color contrast.

It still gets an optical in-display fingerprint and is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+.

What disappointed me was the huge and non-symmetrical bezels.

Under-the-hood

Under the hood is the upgraded Samsung Exynos 1480 SoC with Xclipse 530 GPU based on AMD RDNA 2. We will expect a much better graphics performance when comes to gaming or high graphics-intensive tasks.

In Malaysia, we only receive one configuration; 12GB of memory and 256GB of UFS storage. The storage can be further expanded via a microSD card that is shared with SIM2.

More on the benchmark and gaming tests in my full review.

Camera

There are no hardware upgrades when comes to cameras. The same triple rear camera; 50MP f/1.8 1.0µm primary camera featuring OIS, 12MP f/2.2 1.12µm ultrawide, and a 5MP f/2.4 macro camera.

What improved was the removal of the silver trim on the 32MP f/2.2 selfie camera.

One UI 6.1 & Samsung Knox

The Samsung Galaxy A55 5G comes with One UI 6.1 (based on Android 14) out-of-the-box and promises 4 years of Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security patches. This is something that no other mid-range smartphones offer.

With Samsung Knox, your data and privacy are kept safe. The Secure Folder feature acts like a hidden vault for your most private files and apps. It’s as if you have a secret phone within your phone, ensuring that your personal information stays secure from any intruders or threats. Will have a separate article on how the Samsung Knox works and why you should consider getting a Samsung Knox-protected device for your next device.