Samsung Galaxy A56 Review: Unremarkable In The Best Way

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Need To Knows

• Reliable 50 MP main camera lens with a 12 MP ultra wide lens and 5 MP macro lens
• Glass back gives a premium look and feel
• Large 6.7-inch display with 1,900 nits peak brightness
• Genuinely all-day battery life

We’ve reviewed so many mid-range smartphones recently at Mark Ellis Reviews and they have all been virtually as good as each other. So the Samsung Galaxy A56 has a job on its hands to avoid embarrassment.

And I’m not going to draw this storyline out, it does. Because of course it does, it’s a phone made by Samsung, the company which helped pioneer the mid-range phone market. The Samsung A-series phones have been good for years now so something catastrophic would have had to have happened to make the A56 worse.

But just how good is it in the context of today’s incredibly competitive mid-range phone market? That’s what I’m here to find out.

Pricing and specs

Design and display – no plastic here!

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is a good-looking phone. It isn’t particularly stunning, in fact, it takes a very conventional approach to visual design being a single colour with a camera bump to one side. But what the A56 does extremely well is to look much more expensive than it actually is.

From the front, it looks pretty much identical to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with rounded corners and angular square edges. The frame is made from aluminium and the back is from Corning Gorilla Victus+ glass, which is a standout feature to note as many phones at this price opt for glass-like plastic (like the Nothing Phone 3a). As I said above, this is a little detail that goes a long way in making the A56 look and feel like an expensive phone. In that respect, I can’t fault the build quality at all.

The display is 6.7-inches which is 0.1 inches larger than the A55 that came before it. This has been achieved by slimming down the bezels, although they still remain a bit on the larger size, especially at the bottom of the screen.

But this really isn’t a problem though. The display is massive, much larger than others like the Google Pixel 9a, so if a big display is a must, then the A56 meets that mark. Speaking of the display, it uses FHD+ Super AMOLED technology with a 120Hz refresh rate and has a peak brightness of 1,900 nits. That’s higher than the iPhone 16e’s 1,200 nits but also much lower than some other phones like the OnePlus 13R which has a ridiculous 4,500 nits peak brightness.

Again, this doesn’t really matter. The A56’s display is beautifully vibrant, dynamic and bright enough even in direct sunlight. It’s a shame that it doesn’t have Samsung’s anti-reflective coating though.

Samsung says they’ve made the A56 thinner to make it easier to use in one hand but it is a large phone meaning you have to stretch to reach the other side of the screen.

Overall, I like the design. The glass back feels premium and the options for a bit of colour are much appreciated. Similarly, the display is typically great from Samsung with the 120Hz making it feel zippy and modern. There are higher specc’d displays out there at this price but the average user wouldn’t notice the difference. It’s a safe bet from Samsung.

Performance and battery life – both are perfect for everyday use

I’m not going to go deep into performance numbers because I don’t care about them and I’m sure you don’t either. The Samsung Galaxy A56 uses the new Exynos 1580 chipset which is, by all accounts, a significant step up from the 1480. All I know is that it feels very fast.

Things like opening and closing apps happen in rapid time and navigating the OS is a snappy experience. I’ve played a few games on the A56 too and it performs perfectly well with frame drops few and far between. There isn’t much more to say on this other than for the people who will be buying this phone, that is your average joe with no need for advanced specs, the Exynos 1580 is totally fine.

The battery life falls into that category too. It has a 5,000mAh capacity which is actually quite small compared to some other behemoths like the 5,800mAh Oppo Reno13 or 6,000mAh OnePlus 13R. But it performs well enough to easily get you through a day and a night on a single charge and well beyond that if you have power-saving features turned on.

The Galaxy A56 also has 45W fast charging which is a nifty boost from the 25W on the A55 model.

Again, there are no frills here or features shoehorned in to grab a quick headline. The Samsung Galaxy A56 keeps its head down with solid performance and battery life, just like a mid-ranger should.

Camera – good, but there are some minor weaknesses

The Samsung Galaxy A56 boasts a 50 MP main camera, 12.0 MP ultra-wide and 5 MP macro. And yes, I do have to point out that this is two more lenses than the iPhone 16e. Megapixels are nice to have but remember, how the phone processes an imae after you’ve taken it is what matters most.

I find it hard to distinguish between the photos produced by different mid-range smartphones these days. They all produce similarly very good, if not the most refined, images that 99% of people won’t have a problem with. You can nitpick if you really are a photography buff (which I will do in a minute), but the good news is that the Samsung Galaxy A56 follows suit with visually pleasing photos that most people will love. 

Point, shoot and be happy. That’s all you need from a phone at this price. As you can see, the A56 delivers in spades.

Here are my nitpicks.

The colours reproduced when in full sun are incredibly rich which I like, but perhaps some might say are a tad oversaturated. This can vary quite a lot too with different lighting. For example, indoor pictures often come out significantly cooler with some shadow brightening happening during processing.

The sharpness is good in general, but in more complex images object edges can begin to look a little blurred when you really start zooming in.

And that’s it really. There are better camera systems out there for this money, the Pixel 9a comes to mind, but the A56 is reliable in producing good photos.

You don’t get optical zoom with the A56 but the digital zoom takes you up to 10x which I was actually very impressed with. A lot of digital zooms are virtually unusable due to the over-processing that happens but the noise on these 10x photos from the A56 is relatively low.

As for video, the A56 shoots in Full HD at 60fps and Ultra HD at 30fps. Like the photos, the video is solid. There are some jittery moments, especially when lighting conditions are challenging, but most of the time you get a good result. The Super Steady mode is also a nice little feature that reduces camera shake from your hands.

Ultrawides are ok on the Samsung A56, you do lose a fair amount of definition when you zoom, but then again the iPhone 16e doesn’t even have an ultrawide so there we are. And that’s where I think the A56 offers such good value. The camera takes very good photos, there are multiple lenses and the app is packed with extra modes and features. You get a lot for your money.

Operating System and AI – Samsung does it best

Mark has made no secret of his love for One UI 7 and after using it on the Samsung Galaxy A56 I can only agree; it is a brilliant operating system.

It just feels so clean, intuitive and uncluttered. The top menu when you drag down is incredibly easy to use, you don’t need to swipe or scroll further to find the options you need. You can pull up the search bar and type in something you’re looking for and more often than not the phone will find it. That includes changing settings without having to hunt through loads of menus.

One UI 7 is simple and all the better for it. It also includes a whole host of Galaxy AI features which have made their way over to the A-series from the Galaxy S25 phones. Unlike a lot of AI in smartphones these days, Samsung has at least tried to make it more useful and capable. Here are some highlights:

• Now Brief: A summary of various bits of important information like the weather and things from your day like key photos in one place for you to view at a glance. The AI will learn from your daily routine and preferences to personalise the Now Bar more accurately.
• Quick menu: You can swipe left from the top right of the screen to bring up Samsung’s quick menu which has AI features like AI Select included. You can use AI Select to choose a part of the screen and do things like Google search or make a GIF.

• Now Bar: An overlay on the lock screen that displays things like active timers, directions and weather updates without having to unlock your phone.
• AI Best Face: Take two photos and your phone will choose the best facial expressions from each and combine them into one photo.
• Object Eraser: Remove objects and people from photos by drawing around them.
• Audio Eraser: Select audio tracks from a video and dampen background noises.

There’s more but the suite of features from Galaxy AI is impressive. Whether you will actually use them is another matter and entirely up to you. But it is great that Samsung has added them to the A56 instead of locking them into the S25 phones.

Conclusion

This is not a phone that blows your socks off just by looking at it like the Nothing Phone 3a and its flashing lights. Although, the A56 does look great with its glass back. Nor will it dumbfound you with a 6,000mAh battery like the OnePlus 13R. Although, the A56 does get a very respectable 29 hours of video playback from a 5,000mAh battery.

Do you see what I’m saying here? The Samsung Galaxy A56 is a very good mid-range phone. There are no major bells and whistles to make it stand out from the crowd, save for the Galaxy AI stuff. But that’s ok. It’s a typically reliable offering from Samsung that pitches itself as the phone to pick when you want something that guarantees value for money.

Sure, you could gamble on whether you’d like Nothing’s more out-there take on tech, or jump into an Honor phone without truly knowing if you’ll like the camera system (it’s all highly subjective). But, much like the Google Pixel 9a, the Samsung Galaxy A56 gives you exactly what you want and need from a mid-range device without making you think too hard about it; good quality hardware, brilliant software and a low price.