Samsung’s new midrange Galaxy A55 arrives with improved security and materials

Samsung’s new Galaxy A55 and Galaxy A35 are the latest additions to its midrange A-series lineup, which often contain the company’s bestselling phones. Both the new A55 and A35 include Samsung’s Knox Vault, a security feature designed to protect sensitive data like your lock screen credentials and encryption keys from software and hardware attacks by physically isolating them from the phones’ main processors and memory. The company boasts that this is the first time the security feature has appeared on its A-series devices.

The Galaxy A55 specifically also includes a metal frame, Android Police reports, which would be an upgrade over the plastic used in last year’s Galaxy A54.

Samsung has announced European pricing for the two models, which are due to be available on March 20th, but exact availability of the different versions varies between markets. The Galaxy A55 starts at €479 (£439, around $524) with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, rising to €529 (£489, around $579) for 256GB of storage.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy A35 starts at €379 (around £322 or $415) for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the 8GB/128GB model costs £339 (around €398 or $435), and the 8GB/256GB model costs €449 (£389, around $491).

Image: Samsung

Many of the key specs of the A55 and A35 are consistent across the two devices. Both come with 6.6-inch OLED displays with 1000 nits of peak brightness and up to 120Hz refresh rates, and both will be supported by four years of Android OS updates and five years of security patches (slightly lower than the seven years of both Samsung promises for the Galaxy S24 lineup). Per Android Police, both have IP67 ratings for dust and water resistance, 5000mAh batteries that can be fast charged at up to 25W, and support up to 1TB microSD cards.

The biggest differences between the two phones come down to their processors and camera setups. The Galaxy A55 is powered by a newer Exynos 1480, while the A35 uses the same Exynos 1380 seen in last year’s Galaxy A54. There are also camera differences between the two. Both have 50-megapixel main sensors and 5-megapixel macros, but the A55 has a 12-megapixel ultrawide and a 32-megapixel selfie camera versus an 8-megapixel ultrawide and 13-megapixel front-facing camera in the A35.

We’ve followed up with Samsung to ask if or when the phones could launch in the US like other A-series devices including the Galaxy A54.