It’s Black Friday sales mayhem this week as retailers get ahead of the official date (November 29) with price cuts and savings galore – and amid the deals frenzy, we’ve spotted the best price yet on one of 2024’s most impressive smartphones – the brilliant and budget Samsung Galaxy A55.
The Samsung Galaxy A55 has been in and out of the deals spotlight over the past couple of weeks, as retailers across Australia switch on their discounts (with Amazon’s Black Friday sales being a site-wide bargain blitz). The A55’s standard price of AU$699 dropped to as low as AU$548 at JB Hi-Fi, only to be quickly one-upped by Amazon with a price of AU$531 – but this deal on Bing Lee’s eBay store has completely blown every other retailer out of the water.
At only AU$497, the Samsung Galaxy A55 is at its lowest price yet. I previously wrote about the phone going down to AU$543 being impressive, but this takes the cake. You’re essentially getting a budget smartphone that is, on a hardware level, less powerful than those in the flagship Samsung Galaxy S range, but can definitely keep up with the day-to-day tasks of a casual user, thanks to its brilliant OS, its capable cameras and its beautiful design, both inside and out.
If it weren’t for the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Galaxy A55 would likely have been my favourite phone of 2024. Affordable, powerful, gorgeous and reliable, the Galaxy A55 retained a sub-AU$700 price tag while one of its major competitors, the Pixel 8a, rose to AU$850 when it debuted. With the Pixel 8a no longer so closely priced to the A55, I can’t help but recommend Samsung’s leading A-series model as the best budget handset of the year.
In our Samsung Galaxy A55 review, the phone earned a TechRadar Recommends seal of approval. Its premium design, matched with awesome value and a long-lasting battery, made it a shoe-in among affordable phones in Australia. If not for its unimpressive charging speed and its glossy exterior that makes for an absolute smudge magnet, along with serviceable (but not showstopping) cameras, it may have gotten a perfect five-star review.
So if you’re looking for one of the year’s best phones and don’t want to spend upwards of AU$500, this is the deal for you. We’re not sure how long this deal will stick around, but as it’s garnered more than 1,000 views (at the time of writing) in the past 24 hours, it probably won’t be for long. If it disappears, you can always head to Amazon for the next-best price (AU$531).