Take a look at the battery recharging speed of the new Samsung Galaxy A55, and find out how its two refresh rate options affect its battery life!
Samsung Galaxy A55 : Two Fixed Refresh Rate Options
The new Samsung Galaxy A55 offers two refresh rate options (Settings > Display > Motion smoothness) :
- Adaptive : Get smoother animation and scrolling by automatically adjusting your screen refresh rate up to 120 Hz.
- Standard : Get longer battery life with a 60 Hz screen refresh rate.
Although the description seems to suggest that the display switches dynamically between 60 Hz to 120 Hz, that’s not accurate. By turning on the frame rate counter, we can see that the Galaxy A55 switches between two fixed refresh rates – 60 Hz or 120 Hz in the Dynamic mode, and uses just 60 Hz in the Standard mode.
The true Adaptive refresh rate offered in the Galaxy S24 Ultra is variable, changing from 1 Hz to 120 Hz according to the situation. This not only reduces power consumption, it also prevents “screen tearing” – a visual artifact that occurs when the game frame rate does not match the display’s refresh rate.
In the next section, we will look at how the two refresh rate options affect the Galaxy A55’s battery life.
Recommended : Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Battery Life + Charging!
Samsung Galaxy A55 : Battery Life Comparison!
The Samsung Galaxy A55 comes with a 5,000 mAh battery, which is the same size as last year’s Galaxy A54, as well as higher-end devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy S23 Ultra and Galaxy S22 Ultra.
To test its battery life, we turned off Automatic Brightness, and set its display brightness to 50%.
Why 50%? That is actually slightly higher than the average indoor brightness level of 40% during the day, and is what we usually use in all our mobile battery life tests.
It is important to fix the brightness level, to make sure the screen brightness does not change as the ambient brightness changes.
We then ran the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test until its battery capacity dropped to 20% several times, and this was the best result we obtained with 60 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rates :
Not bad at all! The Samsung Galaxy A55 has a battery life of 11.5 hours with Adaptive refresh rate enabled, and just over 13 hours with the Standard refresh rate. That’s about an hour shorter than the Galaxy A54.
But let’s also compare its battery life at 60 Hz and 120 Hz, against the Galaxy A73, Galaxy A54, and S24 Ultra smartphones.
Standard Refresh Rate (60 Hz)
The Samsung Galaxy A55 lasted just over 13 hours with the refresh rate set to 60 Hz – a 5.5% shorter battery life than the Galaxy A54.
| Work 3.0 (60 Hz) | S24 Ultra | Galaxy A73 |
Galaxy A54 | Galaxy A55 |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh |
| Battery Life | 16 hrs 25 mins | 13 hrs 4 mins | 13 hrs 57 mins | 13 hrs 13 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
4.06 mAh | 5.10 mAh | 4.78 mAh | 5.04 mAh |
Adaptive Refresh Rate (120 Hz)
The Samsung Galaxy A55 lasted just over 11.5 hours when the refresh rate was set to 120 Hz – a drop of just over 1.5 hours (14.6%). That was also just 4% shorter than last year’s Galaxy A54.
Based on what we see here, I definitely recommend turning on the Adaptive Refresh Rate on the Galaxy A55, unless you absolutely need the extra 1.5 hours of battery life.
| Work 3.0 (120 Hz) | S24 Ultra | Galaxy A54 | Galaxy A55 | Galaxy A73 |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh |
| Battery Life | 13 hrs 49 mins | 12 hrs 25 mins | 11 hrs 32 mins | 10 hrs 42 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
4.83 mAh | 5.52 mAh | 5.78 mAh | 6.23 mAh |
Samsung Galaxy A55 : Battery Recharging Speed!
The Samsung Galaxy A55 supports up to 25 watts of wired fast charging, but unfortunately, does not come with the charger in-the-box.
So we relied on the standard 15 watt Samsung fast charger than shipped with their previous smartphones – something we believe most users will end up doing, and added the 25 watt Samsung ultra-fast charger.
| Recharging Speed | S24 Ultra |
Galaxy A73 |
Galaxy A55 |
S24 Ultra |
Galaxy A54 |
Galaxy A55 |
| Battery Capacity | 3,300 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh |
| Charger Output | 25 watts | 15 watts | 25 watts | 15 watts | 15 watts | 15 watts |
| Battery Life | 68 min | 85 min | 88.5 min | 106.5 min | 120.7 min | 138 min |
| Charging Speed (per minute) |
58.8 mAh | 47.0 mAh | 45.2 mAh | 37.6 mAh | 33.1 mAh | 29.0 mAh |
The Samsung Galaxy A55 fully recharges from 20% to 100% in 2 hours and 18 minutes with the standard 15 watt Samsung charger. Oddly enough, this is significantly (14.33%) slower than the Galaxy A54.
That’s a pretty poor battery life : recharging ratio of just 5:1 – 28.5% less than the Galaxy A54. As a rule of thumb, you need to charge it for 12 minutes for each hour of battery life.
But if you upgrade to the 25 watt Samsung super-fast charger, you can cut it down to under 1.5 hours – an improvement of 56%. That also improves its battery life : recharging ratio to a much better 7.8:1.
Samsung Galaxy A55 : Price + Availability
The Samsung Galaxy A55 comes with 8 GB of RAM, and either 128 GB or 256 GB of storage, with the option to add a microSD card in the hybrid SIM tray. It is covered by a 2-year warranty, with the following launch prices:
- 8 GB + 128 GB : £439 / A$699 / S$618
- 8 GB + 256 GB : RM1,999 / £489 / S$698
Surprisingly, Samsung decided not to bring the Galaxy A55 to the United States, and suggested that customers consider the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 FE instead. However, it is possible to purchase Latin American unlocked devices in the US (see below).
There are four colour options, which are not available in all countries – Awesome Iceblue, Awesome Lilac, Awesome Lemon, and Awesome Navy.
Here are online purchase options (we may get commission from your purchase) :
- MY : 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours
- SG : 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours
- US : Awesome Iceblue | Awesome Lilac
- UK : Iceblue | Lemon | Lilac | Navy
- AU : Awesome Lilac | Awesome Navy
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (SD8 Gen 3) Performance Review!
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra : All 4 Colours Compared!
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