Alright, so today we have the newly launched Galaxy A55 and A35 5G. The question that has to be asked is: where does this A series fall? And what’s new with the Galaxy A35 and A55?
Okay, it looks like someone is going to be very happy with this box. You get the phone, some paperwork, a Type-C to Type-C cable and a sim ejector tool, flagship unboxing. We’ll mostly be talking about the A55, but wherever necessary, we’ll also mention the A35, so you get a better idea. We have used both the phones for a couple of days and the camera is something that is good in A series. But before you get to that, there are three really interesting things about these phones.
When you hold the phone in hand, the first thing that you’ll notice immediately is the design. When you look at them, they look similar to the flagship S24 series. The Galaxy A55 has a glass back, a metallic side frame which has a brush metal finish, making the phone feel very premium in the hand. Someone in the office thought that this is S24 Plus, launched in blue color, so that’s there. The Galaxy A35 also got an upgrade in design compared to last year’s A34. Now, it has a glass back and also a punch-hole display. On the right side, if you see, the part where the power button and the volume rocker exists, it’s kind of slightly raised. Samsung is calling this a key eye-line. See, when I’m listening to music and the phone is in the pocket, it’s way better to feel this raised part and then easily navigate to the volume rocker. I like this in practical life.
This was surprising. The A55 has glass back, Corning Oreo Glass Victus Plus, IP67, etc. But the A35 also has a glass back, Corning Oreo Glass Victus Plus, IP67 water-resistant, which is good to see at this price range. Both the A55 and the A35 come with Android 14 right out of the box with the latest One UI 6.1. The good thing is you get GoodLog module support. In case you don’t know, GoodLog gives you the next level of customization. Here’s my favorite, sound assistant. So, I can now customize the entire volume panel and not just that, I can even make my own volume panel colors and the best, I can control volumes from individual apps like Spotify, BGMI, etc. And you get Knox with both the phones. So, in simple words, Knox is a hardware plus software feature. Now, it gives access to a bunch of security features like secure folder and all of that but we found this option called private share. So, see, if I have to share a photo of me to Shorbik for suppose a credit card details or passport size photo, I select the photo and then go to quick share and then tap here on private sharing. Now I’ll select the expiry limit to one minute, and this is amazing. I share the file and after one minute, the photo will automatically get deleted from Shorbik’s phone, and the best part about it is Samsung wallet. Now we are here at MECD and hold on, so now we are trying to do UPI, but as you see because of low network, it is not working. Let me show you. So, you go to tap to pay. Tap to pay works seamlessly when you don’t have an internet connection, and it’s very handy. Other than that, you can also hold train, travel tickets, Aadhar, Pan, etc. directly from Digilocker. Moreover, with both the phones, you get 4 years of software updates and 5 years of security updates, which is by far the best that you get in this price range. Just to add, there are also some pre-installed apps like Amazon, Netflix, Snapchat, Mintra, and like me. If you don’t like shopping online, you can uninstall all these apps.
Before we go to the camera section, in A55 and A35, you get a 6.6-inch Full HD 120Hz Super AMOLED display. I was watching Merry Christmas on Netflix, and the display looks sharp, the colors are vibrant, and on Netflix, it supports HDR10, but I didn’t like the movie, that is there. The Galaxy A55 comes with Exynos 1480 processor, 8GB RAM, and 256GB storage for the base variant, and the A35 comes with Exynos 1380 processor, 8GB RAM, 128GB for the base variant. We ran N22 benchmark on the A55, and it scored somewhere around 7 lakh, which is a bit better than Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. On the A35, it scored somewhere around 6,15,000, which is again a little bit better than the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. But benchmarks are benchmarks. What about practical day-to-day usage? Like the other day, I wanted to make chicken ramen noodles, so I opened the YouTube app and Notes app in split-screen for noting the recipe and switched to BlinkIt for adding the ingredients. I was able to switch between these apps smoothly and do split-screen without any issues. The chicken ramen was also good (sorry if you’re a vegetarian). In gaming, we played Call of Duty, and we can play the game only in low graphics and 60 FPS, and the gameplay is quite good as you can see the FPS overlay. It stays somewhere around 58-59 FPS.
That’s all about it.
