The Samsung Galaxy A56 makes way more sense to me than the S25+

Samsung knows not to mess with a good thing. The Galaxy A series has long been an affordable phone heavyweight, diluting down a lot of what makes the higher tier Galaxy S so great in order to hit a keener price point; this year’s Galaxy A56 is more of the same. Only it lands just as arch-rival Apple has started charging considerably more for its economical effort.

At £499 (US pricing and availability was TBC at the time of writing), the Galaxy A56 undercuts the iPhone 16e by a significant £100 – yet tops it on screen size and camera count. That alone could be enough to sway disgruntled Apple shoppers. And while there’s no shortage of Android competition at this price, none have Samsung’s brand cache (at least in the Western world, anyway). Does that make this the mid-ranger to beat?

I got to try one out ahead of Samsung’s official reveal to find out. On first inspection, it already seems like it could give the firm’s own Galaxy S25+ an identity crisis.

Familiar looks, with a twist

The Galaxy A56 isn’t all that removed from last year’s Samsung Galaxy A55. It keeps the same ‘key island’ design, which elevates the power and volume keys out from the flat-sided frame, while the equally flat front and rear glass could easily be mistaken for a Galaxy S25+. The only obvious difference is the rear camera bump, which is one single piece instead of the S25’s individual lenses. It by no means looks cheap, which is something other mid-rangers still have yet to pull off, and IP67 resistance is very good for the money.

Samsung has slimmed the phone down to 7.4mm, which is a modest yet welcome improvement from the 8.2mm Galaxy A55. SHaving down the bezels a fraction means you’re getting a 6.7in screen here rather than 6.6in, but the new phone sat just as comfortably in my palm as the old one. The AMOLED panel has the punchy colours and phenomenal contrast I expect from Samsung, while the FHD+ resolution looked crisp enough from arms’ length.

Brightness has reportedly been boosted to 1200 nits while outdoors (up from 1000 nits) and a peak 1900 nits for HDR, though my indoor demo didn’t really let me check how well it holds up in direct sunlight. I’m expecting it to be on par with the similarly-priced competition for real-world use.

The A56 launches alongside the £399 Galaxy A36, but to tell them apart you’ve either got to know Samsung’s colour options intimately, or be very good at spotting the difference between brushed metal and polycarbonate made to look like metal. Dimensions and design are basically identical, and in the hand there’s not a huge amount of difference.

I’m in two minds about the polychrome finish on some of the lighter hued handsets; the way they catch the light is a lot more visually appealing than the boring pastel colours used for the Galaxy S25 range, but it also reminds me of any number of underpowered 2019-era mid-rangers from other brands.

Can the cameras deliver?

Flagship-grade S25 Ultra aside, Samsung hasn’t really chased pixel counts or refreshed its camera sensors nearly as often as other phone makers. That means the Galaxy A56 continues to rock a 50MP lead lens with optical image stabilisation and an f/1.8 aperture, a 12MP ultrawide, and a 5MP macro; the trio are effectively three generations old at this point.

That means they’re a known commodity, and even with another year of image processing improvements, I have a pretty good idea what to expect in terms of quality. Sharp without appearing crunchy, colourful yet on the right side of lifelike, and with enough dynamic range to please long-time Galaxy users. The sample shots I took during the preview event looked pretty good on the phone’s screen, but I’m expecting it to be near the middle of the mid-range pack rather than at the forefront.

Samsung reps talked a big game about the improved 12MP front selfie cam during my briefing. It can now film HDR video and has smarter low-light noise reduction. You can also create photo filters from existing images, automatically trip video clips and replace faces in group shots, which have all carried across from the Galaxy S25.

Pick your performance

Buy a Galaxy A36 and you’ll get a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 CPU, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The Galaxy A56 steps things up to a home-grown Exynos 1580 CPU, which Samsung reckons should deliver between 10 and 20% performance gains over the outgoing A55.

I wasn’t able to test that claim during the demo, or how effective the larger vapor chamber was at keeping the phone cool when under heavy load. It did make OneUI 7 feel nice and nippy, though, with apps opening quickly enough and Samsung’s AI additions responding well to my taps and swipes.

Action chips at the top of the screen make Google’s Circle to Search a little more useful, and you get the Galaxy S25’s Now Bar on the lock screen to highlight music playback, map directions, and other incoming notifications. The Now Brief app hasn’t made the cut, though, and plenty of other Galaxy AI features. are MIA. Being able to read web pages aloud might be handy for accessibility, but it’s not nearly as useful as the S25 Ultra’s note and writing assists.

On the plus side, Samsung has stepped up its software commitments from last year, with six new Android generations and six years of security patches promised. That’s compared to four OS upgrades and five years of security fixes last year, and puts the A56 more in line with Google and Apple’s mid-rangers for longevity.

Battery life is a mystery right now; the 5000mAh capacity is identical to last year, and the newer, more efficient silicon will only have so much impact on longevity. I was usually able to drag an entire day and night from the outgoing Galaxy A55, so would expect similar here. That’s a long way short of current class leader Honor and its colossal 6600mAh battery.

I do have to give props to Samsung for increasing wired charging speeds to a more competitive 45W, though. That’s double what the old phone could manage, and is even more than the premium Galaxy S25 gets.

A full review will determine how it stacks up with the rest of the mid-range field, but on first inspection there’s plenty here for Samsung fans on a moderate budget.

The Galaxy A56 is available for pre-order now from the Samsung web store, and will go on general sale on the 19th of March.

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