Key Specs
| CPU | Exynos 1580 (4nm) Xclipse 540 GPU |
| Memory | 12GB LPDDR5 RAM 256GB UFS 3.1 Storage |
| Display | 6.9’’ QHD+ Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X, Variable 120Hz |
| Camera | 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm (wide), 1/1.56″, PDAF, OIS 12 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide), 5 MP, f/2.4, (macro), 12 MP f/2.2 (selfie) |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 5.3, USB Type-C 2.0, Up to WiFi 6 |
| OS | Android 15, OneUI 7 6 major Android Upgrades |
| Battery | 5000 mAh, 45W Fast Charging |
| Available Colors | Awesome Pink Awesome Olive Awesome Graphite Awesome Lightgrey |
| Retail Price | 12GB+256GB : RM 1999 |
Unboxing
What Is The Galaxy A56 5G
The Galaxy A Series continues its yearly path, and for 2025, the poster phone is the Galaxy A56 5G, with the goal of once again bringing upgrading essential features without bumping up the price tag.
As for design, the Galaxy A56 5G retains a lot of its looks from the A55 5G, while adding a tad bit of height for the screen, a drop in weight and a trim on the bezels. The bezels on the screen are a little thinner, which adds slightly more screen real estate without bumping up the phone’s overall size.
The frame is mainly brushed metal, but is not uniform. Instead, the area where the power and volume buttons have a slight outwards ridge, providing an area for your thumb to rest, or to help easily feel where the buttons are in the dark. The area is still metal, but it has been matte layered as a design choice. The front and back of the Galaxy A56 5G is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus+.
The camera layout is vertically stacked, with an island of its own. The bump protecting the sensors are a seperate piece, and really adds a slightly thicker layer onto to otherwise thin frame. The Galaxy A56 5G also includes IP67 ingress protection, pretty much standard in the industry today.
It’s a pretty easy to look at phone that doesn’t break away too much from the “Galaxy” way of designing phones. It feels great to hold and the 198g weight won’t be a burden when you’re holding it for a long time.
Apart from the hardware changes and how it affects the final user experience is the software. The Galaxy A56 5G comes with One UI 7.0 out of the box, which makes it Android 15. The new One UI 7.0 is more than a new coat of paint, presenting itself to be filled with rounded, geometric shapes, which gave me the impression of simplicity and convenience. On the deeper spectrum, One UI 7.0 puts its focus on where it matters the most : AI and its further integration into the user experience.
Galaxy A56 5G gets 6 Years of Major Android Updates and Security Patches, just 1 year short of the S Series’ 7 Years.
It’s no new identity, One UI is still One UI, and what you loved then, you will continue to love here still, just with more AI. It’s still just as buttery smooth, and elements do look noticeably a little sharper and deeper in color, it’s as though it had undergone some contrast therapy and I’m honestly all for it. After all, apart from colors and sharpness, an equally important aspect for a good screen is visibility.
As A Work Phone
As AI became the hot topic for 2025, and for Samsung no less, the Galaxy A Series this year is fitted with Awesome Intelligence, which aims to provide useful AI services and features to those who aren’t ready to commit to the S Series.
To briefly put it, the Galaxy A56 5G’s Awesome Intelligence is a way more simplified Galaxy AI, since it doesn’t have as much NPU power as their flagship counterparts.
Awesome Intelligence – Does It Matter?
Being simpler in AI function isn’t necessarily a let down, it’s simply targeted for those whose lives don’t revolve around relying on Generative AI to help with every day matters. Here are the focus points on Awesome Intelligence :
Non-Generative AI Focus (mostly): While it includes some “smart” features, most of them do not involve generative AI. They are more about enhancing existing functionalities.
Awesome Intelligence includes features like:
- Circle to Search with Google: A widely available feature that allows users to circle, tap, or scribble on the screen to search for information. This is also present in Galaxy AI.
- Object Eraser: Removes unwanted objects from photos.
- Best Face: Selects the best facial expressions from motion photos for group shots (often exclusive to higher-end A-series models).
- Edit Suggestions: Provides smart suggestions for photo improvements.
- Custom Filters: Allows users to create custom photo filters.
- Read Aloud: Converts online text into audio.
- Auto Trim: Automatically trims videos to highlight key moments (often exclusive to higher-end A-series models)
Back to what I asked, Does It Matter? well I’d say yes, and even if it’s a No for you, it’s only eventual that these features will grow on you, apart from the 2 best features out of the mix, which are the Object Eraser and the Google-powered Circle to Search.
If you’re someone whose job relies on their phone camera a lot, you’ll love how Object Eraser is going to help get rid of unwanted elements in your photos, a feature that’s quite loved on the Galaxy S series that also made its way here. It’s very annoying when you have to take photos of your work and you can’t control your environment (such as moving people or sudden objects moving in your shot), so it’s a definitely a feature I truly swear by.
Circle to Search simply helps by quickly indentifying and searching for whatever media you’re looking on your screen that you cannot recognize or fail to search for using your own words. Usually a very useful feature for looking for shopping items, such as specific shoes, or a pair of headphones you’ve forgotten the model name of. On the learning side, you can essentially take photos and Circle Search it as well, which I know have helped me identify certain birds and flowers ( when curiousity strikes).
If AI Isn’t What I’m After?
Well, the Galaxy A56 5G still proves itself to be a reliable workhorse of a phone for daily app-related tasks. It’s not all the time I get to see a strong on-paper spec sheet translate to great experience in real life after all.
The combination of software and hardware this time around is sound and efficient. I’ve always been a One UI evangelist when it came to productivity, and for good reason. For one, the UI design is great with highly functional and aesthetic widgets, followed by optimized multi-window experience. You want to double check an email or number without leaving your draft? swipe up slowly and drag your second app to either top or bottom and have both of them present. THAT’S something I can get behind all the time.
With Multi-Window working so well, it definitely means Multitasking is a cinch on the Galaxy A56 5G, considering that Samsung’s been generous with RAM these days, even when the device is below RM 2000. 12GB of RAM here is going to get you far, especially if you’re the kind of person to keep many apps running throughout your day. The Exynos 1580 presents major strides in performance, placing itself generally above most Snapdragon 7 series chips but far from the 8 series, which I definitely see as fair.
Whether you’re juggling email, editing your next TikTok in 4K using editing apps while listening to music and replying messages, you’re definitely not going to have smoothness problems here. Everything runs well enough, with decent battery numbers to boot.
| Connectivity (Based on a 12 hour day) 1 hour gaming, 1 hour doom-scrolling 10 hours typical messaging, music, and social media | Screen on time |
| WiFi (Dominant) : 5G Data (60:40) | About 5 hours |
| WiFi : 5G Data (Dominant) (40:60) | About 3-4 hours |
| Charging From 0% | Battery Charge Level (5000 mAh) |
| 30 Minutes | 66% |
| Fully Charges In | 1 Hour 14 Minutes (100%) |
Gaming and Entertainment
This is where at this time of writing, the Galaxy A56 5G is really put into a challenging state. But first, the chipset is new. It’s the Exynos 1580, with upgraded ARMv9 cores and the AMD-based Xclipse 540 GPU, doubling performance from last year’s Exynos 1480. Combined with UFS 3.1 storage, the Galaxy A56 5G is able to play all but the most demanding titles efficiently.
Gaming
| Game | Activity | Highest Temperature |
|---|---|---|
| ZZZ (Low, 60 FPS) | Hollow Zero session @ 30-60FPS | 44°C |
| RIPTIDE Renegade (Highest Settings) | Solo Racing @ 90 – 120FPS | 41°C |
| Mobile Legends (Highest Settings) | Ranked Matchmaking @ 60 FPS (5 matches back to back) | 40°C |
Even with the potential it’s supposed to have, AAA mobile titles like Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) is able to achieve 60FPS only on the lowest settings, with lots of frame pacing and eventual throttling which started in the 10 minute mark. The frame pacing is stuttery, causing dips to the 30 FPS range during Ultimate skills which are full of effects. I suspect it could be a driver issue, and that it definitely needs an update to improve on this matter.
Simpler titles like Mobile Legends and RIPTIDE Renegade run smoothly and free of hiccups. The Galaxy A56 5G is truly only recommended for lighter to medium games for now.
How About Taking Photos?
The Galaxy A56’s camera setup largely mirrors its predecessor, retaining the familiar trio of lenses: a 50MP primary sensor, a 12MP ultrawide, and a 5MP macro camera.
However, a notable enhancement comes in the form of a new 12MP front-facing camera, replacing the 32MP selfie unit found on the A55. This change marks a significant improvement for self-portraits and video calls.
Main Sensor
Even in ideal lighting, the main camera on the Galaxy A56 delivers somewhat underwhelming stills. While details are present and colors generally pop, you’ll occasionally encounter clipped or slightly overexposed highlights. This, combined with an overall softness to the photos, leaves room for improvement. When you move indoors, image quality drops significantly. Photos become even softer, and color saturation takes a hit.
Portrait
Portrait shots fared fairly decent, with good detail, colors and highlights. Subject seperation did well too, it managed to capture tough areas like open fingers, though a veil of sotness does seem to want to blanked the entire photo, including the face of the subject as well as the hair. It’s no big deal, but it’s hard to identify the style Samsung was going for when it came to portraits. I mean, the colors I would say are pretty natural, yet this softness is the kind I really see on older real cameras. Perhaps it’s to replicate that experience, which I would totally be okay with considering sharpness isn’t everything, nor should it be a contest (some brands still don’t take the hint).
Either way, portrait is reliable, and I will be taking more portraits and leaving them here to make sure I’m not second guessing myself.
Zooms
Without a dedicated telephoto lens, the Galaxy A56 5G relies on cropping the main sensor + Galaxy AI magic in post to achieve good stills. Images look mostly good as long as there’s enough lighting. You can select preset zooms between 2x, 4x and 10x, and will be able to adjust in-between those ranges.
I’d say shots are slightly above decent at best, with some level of sharpness and detail, good enough for social media uploads that aren’t trying to be to cinematic. More artful shots require skill and vision, so it will only fare as well as its operator.
Camera Spec Recap
- 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm (wide), 1/1.56″, PDAF, OIS
- 12 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide),
- 5 MP, f/2.4, (macro),
- 12 MP f/2.2 (selfie)
ULTRAWIDE
Ultrawide for the most part is good for its price range, with great colors and detail, even though it actually looks softer than most Samsung Ultrawides I have tested over the years. Contrast is really really accurate though, pretty close to the what I’m already seeing in real life, definitely works in combo with efficient HDR post processing.
Macro
It also has better macro capabilities, which is actually a main improvement here, since the sensor does have a bigger pixel count. However, I still think that it will not be as widely used compared to other mainstream modes such as the wide and the zooms. Still, incase you were curious, it fared well in capturing some detail though you definitely need to stay as still as possible to avoid blurry telemacro shots.
Selfies
Front facing photos are taken care of using the tried and true 12MP f/2.2 shooter on all previous models till now. 12MP sensors make it great for low-light as well, and no form of quad-bayer nonsense is in the mix, leaving with you sharp images of your face, with some leeway for detail for your surroundings.
It proves itself once again in an enviroment consisting of mixed lighting, which I imagine would be the situation most people would be in, and not just pure daylight. I am still able to see my dining room, even with minimum dimness from the lights. On a post-process level, I don’t see much push to force more exposure into the shot, which makes sense considering all that would do is invite noise and make people focus on the background rather than my face.
The Verdict
Mid-ranger smartphone users are the type of people that just want things to work, and expect balanced performance in all aspects for work and play. The Galaxy A56 5G is able to fulfill those needs easily, while keeping it reasonable at RM 1999.
I love the software, its simple AI features and long term support, and therefore gets that edge in this competitive segment. The upgrade cycle for midrangers is about 1-2 years due to their lower price and now-aggressive trade in programmes, but if you’re not that kind of person and your upgrade cycle is between 3-5 years, then the Galaxy A56 5G makes for a solid contender.
