Samsung Galaxy A56, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A26: Australian availability, pricing and my early hands-on thoughts

Samsung’s more affordable Galaxy A series sees a refresh in the form of the Galaxy A56, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A26 – with some interesting inclusions and exclusions.

Update:

My review of the Galaxy A36 is now up for your reading pleasure by following this link — or you can watch my full review below!

Who announces new devices on a Sunday?

Samsung does, that’s who, having just revealed the Galaxy A56, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A26 phones.

I had the opportunity to spend a little time with the company’s new mid-range phones earlier this week – and here’s my early thoughts, plus the essential details for each device.

When will the Galaxy A56, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A26 go on sale in Australia?

The Galaxy A56 is the flagship phone of the Galaxy A 2025 series. 

All three of Samsung’s new mid-range phones will be available to buy in Australia from the 27th of March 2025.

How much do the Galaxy A56, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A26 cost in Australia?

The Galaxy A26 is the lowest priced model — and it only comes in one colour, black. Not even Awesome Black, just… black.

Like their predecessors – phones like the Galaxy A35 and Galaxy A55 – the pitch here is to mid-range buyers, so the pricing fits that price space.

The Galaxy A26 is the lowest priced model of the bunch; it’ll cost you $499 outright.

The Galaxy A36 is just slightly more expensive, with pricing starting at $549.

The upper tier of Samsung’s mid-range ambitions is the Galaxy A56, and that’ll deplete your wallet for either $699 or $799 depending on the internal storage level.

There’s also an upper tier level version of the Galaxy A56, the Galaxy A56 5G Enterprise Edition, though pricing for that model wasn’t revealed. Given that focus, you may well have to buy that model in bulk, or through some very specific sales channels, or both.

What’s lurking under the hood of the Galaxy A26, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A56 phones?

This calls for a specifications table! This is what Samsung’s said so far about its new handsets – I’ll update once more information becomes available.

Galaxy A26, Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A56: Alex’s VERY EARLY take

Samsung’s made some interesting choices for these phones; I love that they’re IP67 rated across the board (reminder: That does NOT mean that they’re waterproof) and I equally love that they’re getting 6 years of both OS and security updates across the board.

It gets slightly better if you’re a business, by the way, with the Galaxy A56 Enterprise Edition getting 7 years of both to keep it ticking along, though that’s likely at either a higher per-unit cost, or at the cost of having to buy a whole fleet of them all at once – I presume.

I don’t love the fact that only the entry level Galaxy A26 gets microSD card expansion as an option. Samsung representatives told me that their research shows only a small number of people use microSD expansion cards, and maybe that’s true – and maybe it’s a little creepy that Samsung seems to know this about our phone usage habits – but count me as one of the crew that likes having the flexibility to expand storage on phones easily and cheaply via microSD. I can’t be the only one.. can I?

What you don’t get that you do in phones like the recently reviewed Galaxy S25 Ultra is Galaxy AI; that it seems is an exclusive for Galaxy S and Galaxy Z phones, at least for now. It’s 2025, so you do get AI, it’s just that it’s (sigh) “Awesome AI”.

No, I don’t write the slogans for this kind of thing, can you tell?

Most of the “Awesome AI” features appear to largely be the Google-related AI features we’ve had in earlier Samsung and Google Pixel phones; features like circle to search and song search for example.

The Galaxy A56 gets some AI-assisted photography modes not found on the cheaper A36 and A26 phones in the form of Best Face to combine group expressions into the best possible hybrid shot, as well as claimed improvements in low light photography, or in Samsung-speak, “Nightography”.

So, my briefing – as these things tend to go – didn’t afford me a whole lot of time with the Galaxy A26 and Galaxy A56 beyond a little loose photography of each model.

The phone I have spent a bit more time with, however, is the Galaxy A36, because I’m in the early stages of testing one out for review.

Samsung Australia offered me the choice (ethical note: this is a loan phone, it’ll go back to be clear) and I went for the Galaxy A36 because last year’s Galaxy A35 was, in my view, the best of the range in terms of the balance between price and feature set.

It’s early days yet – my full review will come in due course – but I have this sneaking suspicion that it’s going to fill that role again this time around, though it will also be interesting to see where the Galaxy A56 heads to one-up 2024's Galaxy A55.

The jump from Exynos 1380 has seemingly upped the ante only slightly to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3, with both the Galaxy A56 and Galaxy A26 running on Samsung’s own Exynos silicon, but the improvements do seem to be there in performance terms.

Battery life is still in the rolling test phase, but it’s looking OK too so far – and once again, I’m only a couple of days into testing, give me time!