For a moment, I almost forgot about the A Series from Samsung, and when they announced the A Series and the Samsung Galaxy A56, I went, “Oh yeah.” But I was still skeptical whether or not it was going to be good.
However, when they said that the price of the Galaxy A56 was priced at RM1,999 (~USD447), I wanted to see if this phone was worth the price. Especially with many other phones having similar prices like the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro or even the previously reviewed Redmi Note 14 Pro+.
Design
In terms of the design, although it might seem like they copied what they did on the base S25, but plot twist, or the good news is that they didn’t. This design feels refreshing, and not only for the eyes but also on the hands as well.
It has an aluminum frame with a sort of a bump at the power and the volume buttons. While many thought that it was weird at first, but for me, I actually loved it. Because it makes me feel the buttons better, and it also gives a better grip.
The phone’s glas back enhances the entire premium feel of the phone. This is called the Awesome Lightgray, which does look more like white, and then there are also other colors: Awesome Graphite, Awesome Olive, and Awesome Pink.
Going back to the glass finish at the back, it uses Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+. They also use it for the front as well. It is the same as last year’s A55, but this did give me a more tougher vibe, even with a display looking more reflective than the flagships.
All of this sounds like good news because, yeah, it is good news. But the not-so-good news is that just like the flagship, this will definitely wobble if you type the phone on the surface.
Aesthetically, I do prefer the more blacked-out camera modules that the flagship had, but in terms of the design and the overall build quality, I would give this a 4.5 out of 5.
Display
Moving over to the display, this 6.7-inch 1080p 120Hz Super AMOLED display is what stands out the most on this particular phone, like literally, and that has to be expected since it is a Samsung phone.
The Galaxy A55’s bezels made last year’s model slightly larger, but the only thing to nitpick is a slight chin at the bottom, so it isn’t particularly uniform, but people of course expect that, especially for a phone within this price range.
So, to distract myself from the feeling of being spoiled by all the amazing flagships with their fantastic displays on the S series phones. I downloaded the darker-themed wallpaper from my buddy Daniel from ZONEofTECH on his WallpaperZ app, which immediately solved my tiny visual distractions.
Based on my daily use for the past week, the screen was plenty bright with a typical brightness value of 1,200 nits and a peak brightness of 1,900 nits.
Fingerprint Sensor
And the in-display fingerprint sensor is not the ultrasonic ones, which means that you won’t be able to unlock the phone if your fingers are wet.
So, while the phone has an IP67 rating, swimming pool selfies will have to wait because you’ll need to dry those fingers first before you can actually unlock the phone.
But while I could work around that, one issue that I found a little annoying is that there’s that sort of an animation where if you unlock the phone using this fingerprint sensor, it feels slow because of that.
So, I would advise you to go to your vision enhancement in the settings menu and toggle the “Reduce Animations”. But of course, it is still not as fast as the flagship ultrasonic fingerprint sensors.
And there’s another thing that I really love about Samsung phones is that in that particular vision enhancement settings, there’s the “Extra Dim” toggle which makes using the phone under low light or even at night really great.
So, because of this, I would give a 4 out of 5 for the phone screen.
Camera
Then, as for the cameras, I will not go too technical on the specs, but instead, I’ll tell you what’s really good and which areas that really kind of made it feel like a mid-range smartphone.
Daytime Shots
The ultrawide lens during the day were decent; the edges did look tiny distorted, but the dynamic range was handled well.
The main 50MP lens for me was the best, and this really made the phone’s photo look like a flagship phone even when you zoomed up to the maximum 10x zoom.
Then, the rear portrait mode during the day and also at night for humans and objects were really good, but probably not the best when it comes to the edge detection for pets.
Then, the dedicated macro lens on the phone was very disappointing. First of all, I’m not a fan of this dedicated lens in the first place, and second of all, nailing focus isn’t easy, and you will need lots of light to get proper macro focus shots.
But as for portrait selfie, photos during the day were amazing, even with two people in the shot, and so was the nighttime selfies as well.
Nighttime Shots
Then, the ultrawide photos at night were not the best, even so for the main lens too, but sometimes if you get the focus and the overall exposure right, it did do a decent job.
Based on some reviews I saw online, there were some major complaints about the camera app having a shutter delay, but that never caused me any issues during my one week of use, probably because a software update rolled out before I started using the phone, and the camera app’s shutter button also caused me no issues.
Video Recording
[Check out sample video footage in my YouTube video]
Then, video recording for the rear can go up to 4K 30fps. The ultrawide lenses performed very well, but the main lenses showed a slight color shift when you switched over from the ultrawide to the main lenses, where the ultrawide lenses seem to oversaturate the footage more.
While the image stabilization for the front camera was awesome, really good, but the dynamic range for the background can be overexposed if it’s too bright.
Then, the quality and the stabilization for the ultrawide lenses at night were not as good as the main lenses, but the front video recording at night was quite decent.
So, for the cameras, I would give this a 3.5 out of 5.
Don’t forget to check out my YouTube video for a vlogging test!
Software
So, of course, the software is where the phone also really stands out from the rest. The phone comes with One UI 7 on top of Android 15.
One UI
If you’ve been watching our reviews, especially when it comes to Samsung phones, you already know how I feel about One UI 7 or One UI in general.
But if it’s your very first time here, honestly guys, it’s one of the best Android skins around, especially with the new One UI 7 where the overall optimization was really great because Samsung has also added a bunch of minor little tweaks to make the entire use experience or the usage experience way better.
And that is the part that makes this phone stand out compared to any other smartphone within this price range.
But another part is the fact that Samsung is also promising 6 generations of software updates and 6 years of security updates, so this phone can really last you a while.
Galaxy AI
Then, of course, Galaxy AI is here, and that is something that everyone can agree with on how amazing their AI software features are compared to any other smartphones, especially the iPhone.
And together with the dedicated ones from Google, it is still one of the best phones when it comes to software optimization, the usage, and of course, more useful AI features that you would actually use daily, which I did cover in depth in my review of the S25 Ultra, so do check out that video over here if you haven’t. https://youtu.be/0wBrAxkZkLU
Specs
Then, on the inside, the phone comes with the Exynos 1580 chipset. Yes, it may not be as great as the Snapdragon chipsets, but hear me out, it is a 4nm chip which lines up pretty well from day-to-day use.
And no, I’m not the kind of person who does benchmark tests as I find that putting my SIM card inside while using the phone daily would be the best way to really know if this phone holds up daily well or not, and yes, it did.
It comes with 12GB of RAM with 256GB of storage here in Malaysia, so there’s plenty of RAM for all of your AI needs or even the overall multitasking.
But when it comes to gaming, here’s where the results were interesting. But before that, when it comes to software, I would give this phone a 5 out of 5.
Gaming
So, when it comes to gaming, easy or not-so-heavy games like Asphalt Legends Unite ran extremely well. But for heavy graphic games like Genshin Impact, it ran surprisingly very well for a mid-range phone at high graphics at 60fps. The graphics look nice, and so was the texture in the game too, thanks to the display as well.
Then, in terms of comfort, I did find that if you game for long periods, this camera bump at the back does make it feel a little uncomfortable.
As for heat, it did become warm at about 15 minutes or so, but if you want, you can push it to the highest settings in Genshin Impact by toggling the performance mode, and while it did run very well, but it made the phone a bit more hotter than how it was previously, so do keep that in mind.
So, with that, I would rate the gaming performance a 4 out of 5.
Battery
Another surprising area was the phone’s battery performance because while it did come with a 5,000 mAh of battery, the amount of screen-on time that I got was on average about 4 hours plus, but that is with a very heavy use.
At max, I could stretch up to 5 hours, and here’s where the battery optimization for the Exynos chip might not be as good as what the Snapdragon or even MediaTek provides for their powered phones.
But the real saving grace is the upgraded 45W of wired charging compared to last year’s 25W. It has a glass back, but keep in mind there is no wireless charging, and that is also to be expected for a phone within this price range.
Conclusion
Okay, so everything does seem very well and great for a RM1,999 (~USD447) phone, but where I see this phone best is the overall build quality, the software optimization and support. The cameras, especially for during the day kind of shots, were really flagship level.
And as for the other areas is where you might start to realize that this is a mid-range smartphone.
But with everything being said, I would still recommend this phone compared to the others out right now. But if you have the extra budget, you can look at the base model S25 instead, you’ll find my in-depth review of that over here.
🛒 Get the Samsung Galaxy A56 at the link below:-
Shopee (MY) – https://invl.me/clmmv9b
Lazada (MY) – https://invl.me/clmmv9c
