Galaxy A55 rumor: Samsung’s mid-ranger champ takes a retrograde path, retains the Galaxy A51's macro and lacks a telephoto

Somebody ought to visit South Korea’s Samsung headquarters, get to the Galaxy mid-rangers department floor, then find out who’s working on the upcoming Galaxy A55 and rush into their office. No doubt there will be a 2020 calendar hanging on the wall.

It’s 2024, time to move on!

This little rant is inspired by the latest rumor about the Galaxy A55: the upcoming mid-ranger king from Samsung that’s shaping out at a slow pace thanks to scarce information and leaks. Last week, we got to see some nice design renders that leaked in the first days of 2024. It resembles the looks of its predecessor pretty much, but the flat, metallic frame, along with the slim bezels, bless the phone with a premium feel.

What about the camera?

Thanks to the always-reliable Dutch GalaxyClub, we now learn something that doesn’t make us want to say ‘Thank you’ to Samsung. Apparently, the upcoming Galaxy A55 will come with a 5MP macro camera.

As did the Galaxy A54. As did the Galaxy A53. As did the Galaxy A52… and the Galaxy A51.

Not to be cheeky, but when the 5MP macro option was introduced on the Galaxy A51, we were thrilled to see the main camera could record in 4K. The previous Samsung mid-ranger, the Galaxy A50, topped out at FullHD resolution (1920 x 1080 px) for video recording. We’re not saying the 5MP macro camera is old, we’re just saying it’s from a time when 4K was a cool feature to have on a $350 phone.

So, no telephoto?

As the GalaxyClub’s report puts it, many people were hoping that 2024 could be the year in which Samsung could ditch the 5MP macro option and instead go for – let’s take a shot in the dark – a telephoto unit to complement the other three cameras. Nope, no telephoto for the Galaxy A55 at this point.

Speaking of the other three cameras, the main one will most likely sport a 50MP sensor, the ultra-wide – a 12MP sensor, and the front-facing camera – a 32MP sensor.

What else is there?

To end on the sunny side of the street, the Galaxy A55 could prove to be perfect for many users (at least those that want nothing to do with Apple’s iPhone SE 4, Google’s Pixel 7a, and potentially that budget-friendly phone from Nothing that’s on the horizon and the almost endless list of Chinese beasts).

The chipset that’s to power the Galaxy A55 – Exynos 1480 – was recently found in the Geekbench database. The test results are promising, showing improvements in both the single-core and multi-core CPU tests compared to the Galaxy A54’s accomplishments.

The Galaxy A55’s Exynos 1480 Geekbench performance:

• Single-core CPU Score: 1,180 points
• Multi-core CPU Score: 3,536 points

The Galaxy A54’s Exynos 1380 Geekbench performance:

• Single-core CPU Score: 1,108 points
• Multi-core CPU Score: 2,797 points

In other words, the not-yet-released Galaxy A55 is already flexing over the Galaxy A54 in terms of CPU performance, especially in multi-core CPU performance. According to previous reports, Exynos 1480 has four high-performance CPU cores clocked at 2.75GHz and four power-efficient CPU cores clocked at 2.05GHz.

As far as GPU goes, the Galaxy A55 will almost certainly sport an Xclipse 530 GPU. While this GPU is based on the older AMD RDNA2 graphics architecture (from the Galaxy S22 series), it should be definitely better than the Mali GPU from the Galaxy A54.

While official release dates are not yet set by Samsung, users can expect a probable unveiling in March 2024.