Samsung Galaxy A36 and A56 hands-on review

Samsung Galaxy A56 hands-on

We are hesitant to refer to the Galaxy A56 as the "bigger sibling" here since the Galaxy A26, A36 and A56 all have the same display diagonal and roughly the same proportions. Samsung's Galaxy A5X line has always been the last midrange step before the proper Galaxy S flagship family, so the expectations are pretty high here.

Like with the Galaxy A36, there are no major changes here, just iterative upgrades. Samsung seemingly didn't want to mess with the established formula that is known to work well too much, so this makes perfect sense.

Once again, the back side hasn't changed too much but is still different enough to make the A56 recognizable compared to its A55 predecessor. The separate camera modules are gone and have morphed into a single, rounded camera island.

At first glance, we were practically convinced that it looked the same as the A36, but that is not exactly the case. There is a subtle difference in the design of the camera cover glass, but you have to really know what to look for.

Also, even though the Galaxy A56 has the same official 7.4mm thickness as the A36, its camera island does protrude a bit more, making it more wobbly on a flat surface.

Speaking of differences, we must bring up the colors and, specifically, the finishes.

While the Galaxy A36 has this whole iridescent thing going on, the colors on the Galaxy A56 are more "traditional" and "solid". You can get the A56 in Pink, Olive, Graphite or Light gray.

The Galaxy A56 is getting the same upgrade in terms of its bill of materials as the A36, namely that the back side is now also made of Gorilla Glass Victus+, just like the front.

Being the more premium device, the Galaxy A56 understandably has an aluminum frame. It comes with a brushed finish for a really classy look, in our opinion. Like the Galaxy A36 and the A55, you still get an IP67 ingress protection rating. It's pretty good, though Samsung could have made the effort to bump that up a bit to say IP68.

As mentioned, all three new Galaxy A devices share the same 6.7-inch display-diagonal. Hence, they look very similar from the front. The Galaxy A26 is easy enough to tell apart since it has a camera notch rather than the punch hole shared by the A36 and A56. As we mentioned, we believe that the two phones share the same FullHD+, 120Hz panel.

Just like on the A36, the display looks great in person on the A56. It is very clear and sharp, with vibrant colors and no ghosting or smearing. Once again, we will double-check the brightness numbers in the full review, but the cited 1,200 nits and 1,900 nits peak figures sound perfectly believable and plausible.

The Galaxy A56 looks practically indistinguishable from the Galaxy A36 from the front. Samsung has slimmed down the display bezels in this generation. Practically all of the hardware, including the sensors, is hidden away and not visible. This includes the snappy and reliable under-display optical fingerprint reader.

There is nothing to note about the rest of the controls on the Galaxy A56. The buttons are where you would expect them and offer great tactile feedback.

Galaxy A56

Just like the Galaxy A36, the A56 has lost its microSD expansion slot. The Galaxy A55 used to have it, and it's a bit of a bummer that it is gone.

Quickly going through some other hardware specs, it is worth noting that the hybrid stereo speaker setup is still there. There is NFC in some markets. Interestingly enough, while the Snapdragon-powered Galaxy A36 gets Bluetooth 5.4, the Exynos-powered A56 is still stuck with Bluetooth 5.3. A minor difference but an interesting one. Also, Samsung didn't deem it necessary to upgrade the Wi-Fi. It is still just dual-band Wi-Fi 6.

The charging situation here is the same as the Galaxy A36. That is to say that the A56 gets an upgrade to 45W charging - a feature previously reserved for Samsung's premium models. So much so that even the base Galaxy S25 is still stuck with 25W charging, which we still find hilarious.

If you are after some early benchmark results of camera samples, be sure to head on over to the following pages.