Samsung Galaxy A55 review

One UI 6.1 based on Android 14

The Samsung Galaxy A55 runs on the latest Android 14 out of the box with Samsung's own One UI 6.1 on top.

Samsung has promised up to 4 years of major OS updates and 5 years of security patches to the Galaxy A55. That's a big commitment on Samsung's behalf and it's more than most competitors have to offer on their midrangers.

Screenshots from One UI 6.1

One UI 6.1 was introduced with the new Galaxy S24 series. The Galaxy A55 gets almost all of the features Samsung's custom overlay has to offer. What's missing are the new Galaxy AI features, which are reserved to the flagships.

We've covered the latest version of One UI extensively in our dedicated review.

Benchmarks and sustained performance

Last year's Galaxy A54 was powered by the Exynos 1390 chip, and now the A55 gets a newer, more powerful Exynos 1480 chipset based on the 4nm manufacturing process.

The new Exynos 1480 features the same 4x Cortex-A78 and 4x Cortex-A55 combo, but the main four cores are clocked higher this time around. The cluster of four Cortex-A78 cores ticks at 2.7 GHz, while the Cortex-A55 cluster remains at 2.0 GHz. The Mali-G88 MP5 GPU, however, has been replaced by the Xclipse 530 GPU, co-developed with AMD and based on the RDNA 2 architecture.

When it comes to memory, the Galaxy A55 has three configurations - 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB and 12GB/256GB. We have the entry-level 8GB/128GB version for this review and after running the AnTuTu storage test, we got results that are in line with the UFS 2.1 standard. Samsung hasn't disclosed what type of storage the A55 uses, but according to our tests, the entry-level version is likely UFS 2.1.

Now, without further ado, let's see how the new Exynos 1480 fares against the competition from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

Performance-wise, the Exynos 1480 appears to be quite competitive. It demonstrates good CPU, GPU and combined performance. It's also a big upgrade over the older Exynos 1380 and falls short only to the higher-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/Exynos 2200-powered Samsung Galaxy S23 FE and the Xiaomi 13T's Dimensity 8200 Ultra SoC.

We are also surprised to see the Galaxy A55 scoring excellently in our stress test. In both, the CPU and GPU stress test, the device maintained near-maximum performance and the handset itself didn't feel extremely hot either.

CPU and GPU throttling tests

The excellent thermal stability would ensure a fluent gaming experience even during long sessions and shows that Samsung has done a much better job at designing the updated Exynos 1480 chip.