The Samsung Galaxy A56 is my pick for a very specific type of phone fan

Introduction

Samsung’s Galaxy A-series hasn’t ever really threatened the best affordable phones with higher-end hardware, but the firm’s fans still regularly flock to it anyway. After all, getting 75% of the flagship Galaxy S experience for 50% of the cost sounds like a very good deal. This year the Galaxy A56 even bests its pricier peer in a few areas.

The 6.7in successor to the Galaxy A55 also evolves things on the styling front, adopts a few Galaxy AI smarts, and gets the latest version of Samsung’s One UI Android skin. At $499/£499 you’re paying half what a Galaxy S25+ will set you back, and less than Apple demands for an iPhone 16e – but the OnePluses, Nothings and Xiaomis of the affordable phone space are even easier on the wallet, and the Google Pixel 9a is mere days away. Is there enough here to appeal to those who aren’t already gaga for Galaxy?

Design & build: familiar yet fresh

It’s not the dead ringer that the outgoing Galaxy A55 was, but the A56 still has an awful lot in common with Samsung’s premium Galaxy S line. The only giveaways are the rear camera bump, which is now a single piece instead of three individual lenses, and the ‘key island’ design that raises the power and volume keys out of the flat-sided metal frame. Equally flat front and rear glass complete the homage.

The back panel’s reflective finish doesn’t look as high-end as the S25’s matte, and isn’t as great at disguising fingerprints. My graphite review unit needed regular polishing to keep free from smears; maybe the pink, olive or light grey options will fare better. Still, I wouldn’t call this at all cheap-looking, and it feels suitably luxe in the hand.

That’s partly because Samsung has slimmed the phone down to 7.4mm, which is a mere 0.1mm more than the far pricier Galaxy S25+ and a considerable change from the 8.2mm Galaxy A55. The screen bezels are that little bit thinner, too, if not quite to the same extent as the S25 series. It’s no heavyweight at 198g, but doesn’t feel as toy-like as some polycarbonate-framed rivals.

You’re getting IP67 dust and water resistance here, which isn’t quite the class best, but still better than the majority of mid-rangers. It’ll survive a complete dunking as well as a rain shower. Gorilla Glass Victus+ front and rear scratch resistance is largely on the money, too. Sadly the microSD card slot has gone the way of the dodo, leaving you with 256GB of on-board storage.

Having switched from a far more expensive handset with an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, the Galaxy A56’s optical under-display unit felt sluggish to recognise my prints – but the difference was minimal when side-by-side with more direct rivals. Face unlock just gets you past the lock screen, which is pretty typical for mid-rangers not made by Google or Apple.

Screen & sound: another ace AMOLED

This is the third time in three years that the Galaxy A-series has seen a screen growth spurt. The Galaxy A56 has a 6.7in panel, up from 6.6in on the A55 (and 6.4in on the A54). Those gains are largely thanks to the smaller bezels, so the phone didn’t feel any bigger in my hand. The resolution hasn’t changed at all, so you’re still getting a taller-than-1080p output that looks crisp enough at arms’ length.

The 60-120Hz adaptive refresh rate makes a return, lowering for static screens and climbing for faster motion. Swipes and scrolls felt responsive enough, which was handy given there’s no way to force 120Hz on permanently.

I can’t fault Samsung’s usual colour treatment, with the AMOLED panel producing rich colours and outstanding contrast. Dark scenes really benefit from the deep, inky blacks, and HDR content also brings out impactful highlights. Samsung has boosted brightness to a peak 1900 nits, while the High Brightness Mode (HBM) caps out at 1200 nits when outdoors. That’s not the highest I’ve seen from a mid-range phone, but was good enough I could use the phone on a particularly sunny March morning and not have to squint.

There doesn’t seem to be much year-on-year improvement on the sound front, but the outgoing Galaxy A55 wasn’t exactly a slouch. The A56’s down-firing driver and earpiece tweeter are as loud and clear as its closest competition, so won’t send you scrabbling for a pair of headphones just to watch a YouTube clip or stream a song on Spotify.

Cameras: three’s a crowd

Does a 50MP lead lens, 12MP ultrawide and 5MP macro shooter sound familiar? It should; the Galaxy A56 sees Samsung bring its mid-tier trio back for a third time, with the only improvements worth talking about being on the software side. That’s not very impressive when rivals will sell you a periscope telephoto setup for the same cash.

Cropping the lead lens does give virtually lossless 2x zoom, but the 4x offered up by the camera app is a little ambitious. Details start to fall off and noise creeps up, even in good light. Purely digital cropping is noisier still, although the results are still usable up to 10x unless you’re shooting after the sun has set.

I’m not convinced the macro lens offers up much value, either. You have to manually swap to it, rather than the app change over automatically when you get close to your subject like the more premium Galaxy S25. Details aren’t a patch on the lead lens, colours aren’t an exact match, and dynamic range is much narrower, leading to highlight blowouts.

The ultrawide puts in a better showing, with colours that get close to the main snapper and better preserved highlights. It’s still every bit the secondary shooter, with less fine detail on display, but it’s better than many ultrawides I’ve used on cut-price phones lately.

Naturally the main camera is the winner here, being able to capture the most detail and with the widest dynamic range. HDR effects are as strong as I’ve come to expect from Samsung phones, preserving shadow detail to an impressive degree – and sometimes at the expense of highlights, which doesn’t always make for natural-looking shots. If you’re a fan of Samsung’s signature style you’ll feel right at home, though. The ability to make photo filters from your existing images has been carried over from the Galaxy S25, if you want more personalised processing.

I spotted more noise in low-light shots than I got from the best mid-range cameraphones, but overall detail levels stayed high and colours were convincing. The 12MP selfie cam up front has gotten a bit better at smoothing out noise, too. Otherwise performance hans’t changed a whole lot between generations, while rivals have pressed on, leaving the Galaxy A56 somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Software experience: AI amuse-bouche

Naturally the Galaxy A56 arrives rocking Samsung’s latest spin on Android. OneUI 7 has been given a minor visual refresh, with updated app icons and a rearranged quick settings panel, but existing Galaxy owners will feel right at home. It’s pretty embarrassing that a brand of Samsung’s stature tries so hard to shove third-party bloatware down your throat during the initial setup, though.

It’s easy enough to navigate, defaulting to onscreen navigation but with an option for gesture controls lurking in the settings menus. The lockscren is a little more customisable now, and the homescreen widgets a little more cohesive.

You’re still getting the usual – extensive – selection of own-brand apps on top of Google’s own, with many being duplicates. There’s a choice of contactless payment providers, web browsers, and photo galleries. Bixby and Gemini are both vying to be your voice assistant. AI Select and Circle to Search also feel like two sides of the same coin; both pull context from onscreen text or images, but Samsung’s version is more about adding events to your calendar and plotting map directions, while Google’s is better for finding things online when you don’t know what search keyword to use.

Aside from the Now Bar, which puts contextual info like music playback, map directions and other incoming notifications on the lock screen, the A56 is missing most of the Galaxy AI features found in the S25 series. Being able to read web pages aloud feels more like an accessibility tool, there’s no writing assistance or ways to summarise long articles, and the image generation tools have been stripped to the bone. Google and Apple’s mid-range models are much closer aligned with their flagships on the software front.

At least Samsung is making more of an effort on annual updates, with six new Android generations and six years of security updates planned. Last year’s Galaxy A55 only got four OS upgrades and five years of security patches. A Pixel A-series should manage a year longer still before Google calls time on it, but things are a lot closer now.

Performance & battery life: home-grown

The Galaxy A56 is the first phone I’ve tested with Samsung’s own-brand Exynos 1580 chipset (and let’s be honest, probably the only phone with one unless the firm re-uses it for next year’s mid-rangers). It’s meant to be a major step up from the outgoing Galaxy A55, with CPU, GPU and NPU all getting upgrades.

Benchmarks back that up, with performance about 15% higher than what I saw from last year’s phone. Geekbench scores of 1352 and 3765 also put it ahead of the similarly-priced Nothing Phone 3a Pro for multi-core tasks, but behind the cheaper Poco X7 Pro. It’s perfectly capable for daily duties, with apps opening quickly enough and animations that were almost always smooth. If you want more oomph, you’ll either have to step up to the full-fat Galaxy S25, or shop elsewhere.

Gaming is merely OK, though, with disappointing scores in 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme test putting it behind most of the mid-range competition. The ray traced Solar Bay test refused to run. I got playable frame rates in less demanding titles and 2D releases, but you’ll need to stick to low details for more intense 3D shooters like Fortnite. Rivals fare better here.

Samsung is a long way off the pace for battery capacity, too. Things are unchanged from last year, while rivals such as Honor are fitting huge 6600mAh batts into their affordable models. A more efficient CPU also only goes so far. That said, 5000mAh is still plenty to work with, and the Galaxy A56 could usually be relied on to last an entire day and night away from the mains. It’s a decent enough showing given the price, just one that falls short of the class best.

On the plus side, Samsung has boosted wired charging speeds to a much more competitive 45W. That’s double what the Galaxy A55 could achieve, and even puts the premium Galaxy S25 to shame.

Samsung Galaxy A56 verdict

Samsung fans will love how closely the Galaxy A56 gets to the elite Galaxy S experience. It looks and feels like a far pricier phone, the colourful AMOLED display shines brightly, and the software ecosystem is as appealing as ever for those already invested in it. Battery life and charging speeds even eclipse the $300/£300 more expensive Galaxy S25.

This is very much still a mid-ranger inside, though. Everyday performance is good enough for the cash, and the lead camera mostly delivers the goods, but nothing here truly stands out from the pack. Samsung is banking on its brand name, which won’t be enough for anyone that cares more about spec sheets.

When the alternatives have more versatile sets of snappers, a wider array of AI abilities, and features not found here, you’ve got to really want a Samsung phone in your pocket in order to buy one. But for that specific case, the A56 is in a class of one.

Samsung Galaxy A56 technical specifications