When it comes to mid-rangers, Google rather than Samsung has your heart

Samsung and Google are both considered the top dogs (at least in North America) when it comes to mid-range Android phones. It’s easy to see why as well, as these handsets are equipped with water resistance, high refresh rate OLED screens, solid to great cameras, and long-term update pledges.

So would you buy the Samsung Galaxy A55 or wait for the Google Pixel 8a to arrive? We posed this question on our website, X page, and YouTube page, and this made for some interesting results. Check out the graph below.

Both the YouTube and X respondents voted in favor of waiting for the Pixel 8a. Google’s mid-ranger typically delivers a flagship-tier processor, water resistance, and impressive cameras. This decision might also be made for some people as the Galaxy A55 is skipping the US.

“Exynos processor, no thank you, sir!” noted YouTube user jedolivier2688. That’s an interesting comment in light of the fact that Google’s Tensor chips are effectively Exynos processors with Google AI silicon.

“Having used a Samsung A series as my old work phone 🤢. Pixel all the way,” X user BigBazNorfFC wrote.

The Galaxy A55 was a winner in one poll

The poll on our website went in a different direction, though, as 50.8% of surveyed readers said they’d buy the Galaxy A55 instead. This suggests that Samsung’s decision to skip the A55’s release in the US may have been the wrong one.

“I was looking to buy a Galaxy A55, but I saw on YouTube that it’s not going to be sold in the United States. What we’re going to see is Galaxy A35,” noted user MartinRomo100 on YouTube.

We can understand why people might want to consider the A55, though. This is the first mid-range Samsung phone with AMD graphics, for one. Samsung is also promising four major OS updates and five years of security patches. Toss in features like an IP67 rating, Good Lock modules, and the feature-rich One UI software, and this is a pretty good proposition.

We also saw a sizeable amount of people across the three polls saying they’d buy another brand’s mid-range phone instead. Comments point to devices like the Nothing Phone 2a, the rumored iPhone SE 4, and more.

There are plenty more mid-range phones we can recommend, such as the POCO X6 Pro, the current Pixel 7a, and the OnePlus 12R.