This Monday Samsung made the Galaxy A55 and Galaxy A35 mid-rangers official, and then shortly after that it was revealed that the company wasn’t planning on selling the A55 in the US, while the A35 would be offered over there.

This was and is an interesting reversal of the past, when the A3x model generally wasn’t available in the US, but the A5x device always was. At the time we got no reason from Samsung for not wanting to sell the A55 in the US, but today that changes, since the company issued another statement, this time to Android Authority, and this one explains things pretty well.

Here’s what Samsung had to say about the situation:

We can confirm that Galaxy A35 5G will be coming to the US market and look forward to sharing more details in the coming weeks. While we will not be carrying Galaxy A55 5G at this time, consumers can still take advantage of our Galaxy innovation at great value with Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 FE.

At first glance you might simply gloss over that – the S23 and S23 FE surely have to be much more expensive, right? Wrong. Both of those are within at most $50 of what the A55 would have been sold in the US for had it made the trip – Samsung can’t outright tell you that, but we can.

The truth is, the A55 would’ve been a terrible deal considering the S23 and S23 FE’s pricing in the US. Compared to those, the A55 has no redeeming qualities, so why would anyone pay almost the same price for it? Exactly.

The story is of course different with the A35, which should be much cheaper, and it’s also different in other parts of the world, like Europe, where the S23 and S23 FE are still more expensive than the A55, even though when you factor in the specs they are probably the better buys over there too.