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In a sea of smartphones, Samsung is a behemoth that launches forth multiple ships, across price segments, which are hard to dislike, and impossible to ignore. One of the latest offerings from the South Korean giant, is the Samsung Galaxy A55, a premium smartphone at a price that doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket.
Design
One look at the rear panel of the Galaxy A55 and you know its signature Samsung. The three camera lenses housed in the top left corner, and a minimalist brand logo at the bottom. The smartphone comes in two colourways, Awesome Iceblue, and Awesome Navy, and I’ve got the lighter-hued Iceblue as my review unit. The smooth glass back and aluminium frame on the sides look and feel classy.
The display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus+, and the smartphone weighs in at around 213 grams, making sure you will feel its presence in the pocket or in your hand.
Display
The smartphone sports a 6.6-inch FHD+ display. I love big screens and I cannot lie! Although, maybe because of its unusual width, it feels much bigger in hand. The Super AMOLED display is expansive and vivid. And the massive real estate is a joy to watch content on. I cue up the short animation ‘Joy Story: Joy & Heron’. The animation and colours look lovely on the screen with the soundtrack coming through with clarity, alongside the sound effects of the pup and the heron. The display supports refresh rates of up to 120Hz so animations and transitions are supposed to look smooth.
Camera
The Samsung Galaxy A55’s main camera setup includes a 50 MP main camera, a 12 MP ultra-wide camera, and a 5 MP macro camera. I first tried out photos in low light - both outdoors and indoors. Photos taken on heritage buildings just around sundown still managed to render decently-saturated colours, although the branches of the trees hanging overhead didn’t look the sharpest nor were they grain-free. Photos taken of a lamppost at night looked quaint without much distortion or noise. However, when I took snaps of people with a lamp or an overhead bulb as an incidental backlight there was too much of a light flare.
There is a 32 MP front camera which delivers some nice selfies. I could choose from the usual Natural and Warm colour tones for selfies. The warm colour mode is too yellow-toned for brown skin tones especially if you have a warm undertone. I decided to stick to natural. The ‘Face’ setting helps me tweak skin tone and texture, and can easily take you from a normal person with visible pores to a freshly baked glazed doughnut with one swipe.
Tech Specs
The Samsung Galaxy A55 runs on an Exynos 1480 processor, although the brand doesn’t exactly mention it in the specs shared. There are three variants to choose from - 8 GB + 128 GB, 8 GB + 256 GB, and the top-end 12 GB + 256 GB, which is the unit I reviewed.
The smartphone runs on Android 14 and has One UI 6.1 as the user interface. Using multiple apps wasn’t an issue. However, transitioning between apps wasn’t the smoothest at times. At times, when I would swipe up to access all open apps, and then switch between those there would be visible stutters while I switch. There were no heating issues while gaming, using the camera, or charging. There was also considerable wait time - 15 seconds to be exact - to open up the new tips and tricks that I could check out in the Settings menu. Not a good look, sadly! There was also a fair bit of bloatware on this one, which I got rid of. Samsung has promised four years of software updates and five years of security patches.
Battery
The Samsung Galaxy A55 has a 5,000mAh, which goes on for more than a functional day. I mostly used the phone to take pictures, watch a few YouTube videos, and play Alto again. With this usage, I’d still have more than half the charge left at the end of the day.
Verdict
Hardware-wise I love the Samsung Galaxy A55. I love the screen space it offers, along with good audio, an elegant design, and great battery life. I also love the Samsung ecosystem and UI, however, small glitches and lags mar the experience of what could have been otherwise a really well-rounded premium smartphone, with almost no flaws.
Price - ₹39,999-45,999
Pros - Premium design, decent camera, long battery life
Cons - Occasional lags and stutters while multitasking, no telephoto camera
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