The Galaxy A55 and Galaxy A35 launched on March 11, 2024, and they’re iterative upgrades. The Galaxy A55 sticks to the triple-camera design with individual camera rings at the top left. It’s getting an upgrade to the Exynos 1480 SOC, which might have AMD graphics.
The primary sensor is a 1/1.56″ IMX766 sensor, which is pretty much the same as last year. The bezels are slimmer, and the chipset finally matches the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 performance. Efficiency was never a problem with the Galaxy A54, so we expect the A55 to continue delivering decent battery life.
Since this is a 2024 Samsung phone, we expected Samsung to provide seven years of major software updates. The Galaxy S24 series, which came out in January 2024, falls under this new update policy from Samsung. They’ll get seven years of security updates and also major OS updates. This finally matches Google’s update promise and also overtakes Apple.
The Galaxy A55 comes with a newer chip, Exynos 1480, so we also expected Samsung to give this phone seven years of major software updates so that they can maintain a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, Samsung has confirmed that the A55 and the A35 will only get five years of software support. This translates to 4 years of major software updates and five years of security patches.
We expect these phones to maintain monthly security updates for the first year or two. The Galaxy A35 is getting an upgrade to the Exynos 1380 SOC, which is the same chipset as the Galaxy A54 from last year. This brings the performance close to the Snapdragon 782G, which is on par with other phones at this price. They’re finally removing the waterdrop notch in favor of a punch hole, a welcome change. The Galaxy A35 will have triple cameras with individual circular camera rings at the top left.
When the S22 lineup came out and Samsung expanded their update policies to 5 years of software support, the A series followed suit at that time. However, that doesn’t apply to the A35 and A55 since they want to differentiate between their models more and incentivize people to buy the more expensive Galaxy S23 FE, which sits on the pricing ladder.
