Galaxy M55 to break the ice with Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip

The Galaxy M55 has popped up in the online performance benchmark Geekbench 4 (via MySmartPrice), carrying model number SM-M556B. The listing says the phone has a “taro” motherboard (ARM implementer 65 architecture 8, variant 2, part 3399, revision 0 – to be precise), which is indicative of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip.

Interestingly, Samsung has never used the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip before. The Galaxy M55 might be the first to do it.

An improvement over the Galaxy M54

As the Galaxy M54, released in March, is powered by the mid-grade Exynos 1380 chip, a jump to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 for the Galaxy M55 should provide some benefits.

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is manufactured on a 4nm node rather than 5nm and generally posts higher CPU, GPU, and battery life benchmark figures. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 has eight cores clocked at up to 2.4GHz and an Adreno 644 GPU.

Additional specs revealed by the benchmark include 8GB of RAM and Android 14, which means the Galaxy M55 will run One UI 6.

There are no other details on the Galaxy M55, but if Samsung follows a 12-month launch schedule, it will announce the upcoming model in March 2024 and release it in April.

Editor's Note: If the Galaxy M44 comes to more markets outside of Korea rocking the Snapdragon 888 chip, and if the benchmark above is accurate, this will put the Galaxy M55 in an awkward situation.

Even if it is a year older, the high-end Snapdragon 888 chip outperforms the mid-range Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 solution, which means the Galaxy M55 would not be as powerful as the older and lower-ranked Galaxy M44.