Samsung's M series is one of its most popular lineups in the country, offering strong flagship features and impressive longevity in the mid-range segment. The new M55 lands with a few segment firsts — the first in the lineup to offer 12 GB of memory and 45 W charging plus fourfive years of Android/ security updates, stuff you’d typically associate only with the flagship S series till recently.
Taking a no - frills approach as far as design is concerned, the M55 offers a matte finish atop a curved plastic rear panel that feels remarkably light (180 g, 7.8 mm) and comfortable in the hand, and the rear camera design takes inspiration from the flagship S24 series. Around the front is a reliable 6.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with full HD+ resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate and 1,000 nits of peak brightness, all of which come together for a respectable, albeit slightly oversaturated, experience when consuming media or playing games. New this time is an optical in-display fingerprint sensor and a stereo speaker setup, but there’s no Corning Gorilla Glass protection though and it’s about time the M series saw some water/dust resistance added for durability.
Under the hood , the M55 rocks the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset with 8/12 GB of memory and up to 256 GB of storage on the higher variant, with the ability to expand further up to 1 TB with a microSD card in place of the second SIM. No skips or lags using One UI 6.1 (based on Android 14) doing regular everyday stuff and multitasking, and you can run Battlegrounds Mobile at moderate graphics for extended sessions with only the slightest uptrend in thermals. And while I enjoy the feature-packed One UI, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the added apps that found their way onto the new phone. Battery capacity is on par, segment wise, with the 5,000 mAh unit on the M55, and the phone lasts past a day on moderate usage, but it charges fast (for a Samsung, that is) — 45 W charging takes it from 0 to 100 per cent in a little over 80 minutes.
Finally, the triple camera setup on the rear — a 50-megapixel primary, an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 2 - megapixel macro — was a bit of a mixed bag, with the primary shooting images with good detail and accurately exposed highlights, but the ultrawide lacking in detail and colour consistency. The macro unit also underwhelms on details, but the surprise element is the crisp images from the 50-megapixel selfie shooter. In all, the M55 may not be particularly exceptional on any one front, but it is a capable performer on practically every front.