GoKawiilAs the RAM crisis continues to bite, the first smartphone releases of 2026 are having to contend with the limited availability and rising costs of precious memory. While flagship phones appear to be weathering the storm so far, I’m starting to become a little concerned about our workhorse $500 handsets — the devices that many cost-conscious consumers actually prefer to buy.
It feels strange to say it after some promising, very affordable smartphone releases in the past month. The Google Pixel 10a and Nothing Phone 4a Pro prove that great phones can be had without breaking the bank, and they have other competitors as well. But these devices were all in development and production before the RAM crunch really started to bite. They could yet prove to be the last of a species that is about to become much harder to produce.
The root of the problem sits far beyond the smartphone industry itself. Memory manufacturers are currently prioritising the booming AI infrastructure market, where demand for high-performance DRAM and high-bandwidth memory is exploding. Data centre hardware can command far higher margins than consumer electronics, which means smartphone makers are no longer the most important customers for memory suppliers. As production shifts toward server-grade memory, the supply of phone-grade memory becomes tighter — and more expensive.
Flagship brands have dropped less profitable SKUs, but what can mid-rangers do?
Looking at the broader phone landscape, we’ve already seen flagship brands adapt their launch strategies to the RAM profitability issue. Samsung has dropped 128GB storage models from the Galaxy S26 series, as it’s well documented that these models have the lowest margins and will therefore be most impacted by higher component costs. While that’s arguably an overdue change for increasingly media-heavy smartphones, it also allows Samsung to raise its effective entry price without explicitly announcing a price hike.
At the same time, Samsung has held the line at 12GB of RAM (outside of its 1TB Ultra) despite an industry-wide push toward AI features that increasingly benefit from larger memory pools. Xiaomi appears to be moving in similar circles: where the Xiaomi 15 Ultra offered a 12GB RAM / 256GB storage configuration, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra now starts at 16GB and 512GB — and carries an eye-watering €1,499 price tag to match its extreme hardware setup.
So far, it seems flagship devices have absorbed much of these shifts because their margins are significantly higher. Mid-range phones, however, do not have the same luxury.
Affordability vs specs
Joe Maring / Android Authority
You have to wonder whether Google’s decision to stick with last year’s Tensor G4 chip in the Pixel 10a (and to leave its RAM unchanged at 8GB) was driven less by product strategy and more by the need to preserve that crucial $499 price point. Google may want its devices to showcase ambitious on-device AI capabilities, but those plans run headfirst into the economics of the mid-range market, which simply can’t pay any price for the memory that on-device AI sorely needs.
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