GoKawiilKris Carlon / Android Authority
TL;DR Rising RAM costs are forcing phone makers to make difficult tradeoffs to avoid raising prices.
Xiaomi’s 17T appears to have cut costs on its speakers, with testing showing weaker audio than its predecessor.
As manufacturers look for savings, buyers may need to dig deeper than the spec sheet to spot hidden compromises.
The rising RAM cost crisis isn’t letting up anytime soon, and manufacturers are increasingly being forced to make tradeoffs just to keep phone prices from climbing even higher. Motorola, for example, took the stagnation route by using the same chipset in the Razr Ultra 2026 as in its predecessor. Stagnation is still somewhat understandable, especially when the chip in question is the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Xiaomi, on the other hand, could potentially be taking a completely different approach.
The company released the Xiaomi 17T late in May. The device is positioned as a mid-range alternative to flagships, and hence, Xiaomi presumably wanted to maintain its modest price tag. But the manufacturer reportedly did so by making a compromise that isn’t immediately evident when looking at spec sheets.
The Xiaomi 17T’s speakers perform much worse than the smaller Xiaomi 17 and the last-gen Xiaomi 15T, as revealed by NotebookCheck after performing audio tests for their review of the device. It found that the speakers in the Xiaomi 17T deliver less bass and depth than last year’s 15T. Last year’s model was also reportedly better at playing high-pitched sounds clearly without making them too loud or sharp.
We’ve reached out to Xiaomi to confirm whether the 17T’s speaker performance is indeed an intended downgrade.
Whether an unannounced downgrade like this is ethical or not is a debate for a different day, but it does highlight a bigger concern. With the RAM crisis not letting up anytime soon, manufacturers that aren’t willing to hike prices will have to make compromises somewhere. Ethically, the onus should be on the manufacturer to clearly disclose those downgrades, but with something like speaker specs, that’s unlikely to be the case. Smartphone-makers rarely ever disclose detailed information about speakers in the first place, making it the perfect place to cut costs without buyers noticing.
In such cases, the responsibility falls on the buyers to spot potential downgrades before they buy the phone, not after.
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