Here at SamMobile, we have never minced our words when calling out how the performance of Samsung's mid-range smartphones hasn't kept up with the times. The out-of-the-box performance of mid-range Galaxy smartphones has been especially problematic despite the advances in both Snapdragon and Exynos chips in recent years.
Perhaps the worst part is that the phones that have suffered the most from poor out-of-the-box optimization in the last 2-3 years are those in the Galaxy A5x lineup, which is currently Samsung's most premium mid-range lineup. The Galaxy A52, A52 5G, and A52s were the last phones that didn't disappoint us with underwhelming performance from the very first moment we started using them.
The Galaxy A53 and Galaxy A54 stuttered a bit too much in the early days, and they needed a few updates before they started performing optimally. It didn't help that the A53 and A54 were powered by Samsung's in-house chips. The A54 was the bigger offender of the two. It launched alongside and had more performance issues out of the box than the A34, which was equipped with a MediaTek chip.
Galaxy A55 performance out of the box isn't disappointing
This year, however, we are happy to report that Samsung has broken its streak of releasing Galaxy A5x phones in a poorly optimized state. There seem to be no apparent issues on the Galaxy A55. It's no Galaxy S24 in terms of speed and fluidity, but it is pretty smooth compared to its predecessors.
We can't say if the reason is that Samsung has worked on software optimization or that the Exynos 1480 chip with its AMD-powered GPU and 12GB of RAM is helping things run smoothly. It could be a bit of both, but either way, we were pleasantly surprised and are keeping our fingers crossed that the A55's performance will hold up in all kinds of use cases, including gaming, as we put the phone through its paces over the coming days for our official review.
