What do most average consumers—I hate that term—look for in a good mid-range smartphone? The basics, like a good display, balanced performance, great battery life, a good feature-rich software experience, and a camera that can take good pictures,? Well, guess what? The Samsung Galaxy M55 gets most of the basics right. Most of it. Let’s get down to business.
This is our Galaxy M55 first impression. All you get inside the box is the phone, the semi-jected tool, a few documents, and no charger. Samsung has now used polycarbonate for the construction of the phone, whether it’s the back or the sides, but because of the use of that material, the phone feels deceptively light. Samsung has kept the weight of the phone under 180 grams, which is really nice. You know what looks like plastic as a material is making a great comeback on phones. And I don’t really mind it if it actually helps make phones thinner and lighter. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. Talking about thinner, the Samsung Galaxy M55 is also very slim. It’s just 7.8 millimeters thick. And combined with that thickness and the light weight of the phone, the in-hand feel is pretty good. And of course, Samsung has stuck to its industrial design language that it follows across different series, whether it’s the S series, the M series, or the A series. So you get these three individual rings for the camera. So even if you buy an M-series phone, you get the feel of using an S-series one, I’m guessing. Here are things that I wish the Samsung Galaxy M55 had, though: branded glass protection for the display and some sort of IP rating. One area where Samsung manages to impress is the display. So you got a large 6.7-inch Full HD Plus Super AMOLED display with a 120 hertz refresh rate as well. And Samsung gives you a thousand nits of peak brightness with its Vision Booster technology. But look at what Samsung has done now. It made the bezels really slim, and the punch hole is really tiny, too.
Isn’t this what you guys wanted? It could have been symmetrical, but I doubt it matters to anyone else apart from me, does it? The colors in the display are vibrant and punchy when you want them; they’re also very natural when you want them because you get the settings in the display. The display is also HDR10 Plus certified, and you can play HDR videos on YouTube, but Netflix support is not available at the moment. But the thousand nits of peak brightness with the Vision Booster technology definitely help when you take the phone outdoors; the sunlight legibility is actually pretty good. To complement the display, you’ve got a stereo speaker setup, which is pretty decent too. Now that it’s an AMOLED display, you get an in-display fingerprint scanner, and it unlocks really fast as well. You also get decent haptic feedback; at least it’s not rattling; it’s kind of soft, but it’s not too bad. Now you and I both knew this before getting into the video: the display on this phone is going to be good, because it’s a Samsung after all. Now, one good thing that Samsung has done is introduce the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. It’s still a two-year-old processor, but it’s a good one because it’s based on a four-nanometer fabrication process, and you can expect a nine-to-two score of about six lakh. We also got a CPU throttle score of about 80% in our 40-threaded, 30-minute run, which is pretty decent. And even in our 3DMark Wireless Test, the GPU didn’t throttle as much, and we got 93.7% stability. COD and BGMI can also run at 60 FPS; we played it; not a problem there. By the way, the phone is available in three variants: the 8128, 8256, and 12256. Yup, 12GB of RAM for the first time on an M series phone.
But this is still LPDDR 4X RAM with UFS 3.1 storage. But when we tested it, the UFS 3.1 speeds were lower than normal. Now, while the phone is not a performance beast, everyday performance on this phone is pretty good for basic usage. It’s very good. In fact, the animations are pretty smooth, like I said. Well, what about the battery? Well, despite being slim, the phone has a 5000mAh battery inside it. And when you couple that with the efficient phone animator fabrication process of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, you can expect good battery life. If you’re using it moderately, it should easily last you a day and a half of full usage, or about 7 to 8 hours of screen time. Also, the kicker this time around is that the Samsung Galaxy M55 supports 45 watt fast charging for the very first time on an M series phone, which is definitely better than the 25 watt that Samsung has been providing till now, and 45 watt is a good middle ground. Although you will have to buy the charger separately, keep that in mind. The software experience is where Samsung hits it out of the park. You get One UI 6.1 with the promise of 4 plus 5 years of software updates as well. I don’t know why One UI 6.1 is smooth; the animations are really well tuned, especially for a mid-range phone like the Samsung Galaxy M55. I face literally no stutters during the time that I use the phone. Plus, with the support for NFC, you also get access to Samsung Wallet, which for me is a system seller. This is one of the main reasons why I use the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra daily. Samsung Wallet is honestly a game changer. You also get Samsung Knox Security and Knox World. All of that has huge advantages. Everything is premium except for the fact that you do get glance integration on the lock screen, and there are a few third-party apps that are pre-installed. Thankfully, you can switch off the glance integration and uninstall the apps, so that’s a good thing. If you ask me, One UI 6.1 is easily the best Android experience for a phone under Rs. 30,000. Well, what about the network capabilities? You get support for Wi-Fi 6 and NFC.
Of course, there’s the Samsung wallet, and you also get support for 13 5G bands. The Galaxy M55 also has a 50MP primary camera with optical image stabilization, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera, a 2MP macro camera, and a 50MP selfie camera as well. Features like nitrography have also been ported to the Samsung Galaxy M55. There’s also the dual recording option, where you can actually shoot with two cameras at the same time, and Samsung’s single-take is present as well. Recording videos using the primary camera and selfie camera is possible at 4K at 30 fps with stabilization. With the ultra wide, you can only shoot at 1080p at 30 fps. We haven’t tested out the cameras in detail, but you’re seeing the photos on the screen right now. All these photos will be collated in a Google Drive link. Put it in the description section below and go check it out now. The Samsung Galaxy M15 has also launched alongside the Samsung Galaxy M55. This phone is priced at 12999, but with offers, you can get it for 11999 now. For that price, you get a super ambulate display, a 6,000 mAh battery, and 4 plus 5 years of software updates as well. Yes, you don’t get a lot of frills, but for Samsung fans, this is definitely a good proposition, especially considering that great One UI software experience that you get with the Galaxy M55.
