Samsung Galaxy M55 review

Unlike many competitors in this segment who have incorporated radical design changes with catchy elements and funky colours, the M55 doesn’t break any new ground in design with its simple, clean and straightforward appearance. Available in Light Green and Denim Black colours, the phone has rounded corners and edges and adopts the vertically aligned ring-type triple camera design from the S-series phones. 

The rear has a frosted glass finish and the device doesn’t offer any declared IP-rating. The plastic frame appears sturdy, while the rear panel flexes quite a bit. Though it might appear fragile, that flexibility might help absorb impact. Well, at least in theory.

The M55’s 6.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display provides ample brightness for a delicious multimedia experience in FHD+ (1080 x 2400) resolution. Colours pop out like in any Super AMOLED display. The screen offers 120 Hz of peak refresh rate. It hides a responsive in-display fingerprint scanner. The display doesn’t provide any colour customisation or tweaking options.  

You get stereo speakers. The audio output may not be as detailed as we would want it to be but is tuned to reproduce clear voice without much bass.

The rear triple cameras include 50-megapixel main, 8-megapixel ultra-wide, and 2-megapixel macro units. The rear camera offer optical image stabilisation and digital zoom up to 10x. The phone can capture 4K UHD videos at 30 fps. You get a high-resolution 50-megapixel sensor even for the front selfie camera, which is a nice measure.

The main camera unit produces decent images in daylight with natural colour rendition. Night mode brings out details in the shadows without altering the main characteristics. We found excessive noise reduction and associated softening of details in most images. But it should be fine as long as you don’t enlarge the images and peep into the pixels. The ultra-wide camera produced good images in most conditions, except for white balance, which was more of a hit-or-miss affair. We have never been fans of 2MP macro cameras that are only there to satisfy the triple-camera craving of average Indian customers, and the third module doesn’t change our perception.

The Galaxy M55 is powered by a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 octa-core processor and is available in 8GB and 12GB RAM options. We received the 12GB variant with 256GB storage. There’s a hybrid card slot that accepts either two Nano SIM cards or one SIM and one MicroSD card up to 1TB.

The phone runs on Android 14 under the slick and responsive One UI 6.1 skin, and the interface is surprisingly clean without much bloatware to spoil your experience. You do get a few extra apps and a default advertisement widget, but most of these can be uninstalled if you are one of those savvy young users who knows their way around smartphones. Samsung's promise of four years of software upgrades should keep you at ease.

The M55 delivered a glitch-free gaming experience in medium graphics settings during our outing with the device. The 120 Hz panel often pushed the frame rates up to match the action on screen. The device runs a little warm most of the time, pushing some more heat out while gaming, but not close enough to scramble for fire extinguishers.

The 5000mAh batteries can easily pull the phone through the day even with some gaming and multimedia consumption. The 45W fast charging capability further enhances the appeal, however, Samsung doesn’t pack a charger with the phone and hence you need to be prepared to spend some extra bucks on one of those high-power adapters.

The Samsung M55 offers a clean, minimalistic design with a plastic body, and is crafted to just fit in and not disrupt the status quo in this market segment. It’s a good device for the price, but there’s nothing that really endears this phone to the customer. The cameras are decent at best, and performance is comparable to other devices in the mid-priced segment. It’s a Samsung at the end of the day, and there are a sizeable number of buyers for whom this matters more than anything else.