Remember when we used to laugh at the idea of phone makers stuffing their phones with as much RAM as possible? It felt unnecessary back then, but now it seems that even if we want phones with a huge amount of RAM, that’s going to be difficult. According to reports, it seems that 16GB RAM phones might be harder to come by soon .
16GB RAM phones could be a rarity
According to the reports, memory prices are expected to go up in the first quarter of 2026 . What does this mean for phones? This means that phone makers might not be as generous with their RAM compared to the past. It could also mean that flagship phones sporting 16GB of RAM could either be nonexistent or a rarity.
In fact, the report claims that 4GB RAM phones could be making a return. Obviously flagship phones won’t use 4GB of RAM. But don’t be surprised if low-end or affordable mid-range devices return to 4GB of RAM for base models. This also seems to align with a recent report that Samsung could bump up the prices of its mid-range models in India. However, if anything, it could be an indication that much RAM was never truly necessary to begin with.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t apps that utilize or could benefit from high amounts of RAM, but maybe for the general public, phones are being bundled with more RAM than necessary.
Why is there a shortage to begin with?
For years, you could buy RAM whenever you wanted at pretty good prices. Phone makers were also pretty generous with their RAM too, so what’s with the sudden change? Well, you can thank (or not thank) AI for that.
The companies that typically produce RAM, like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, are shifting production to high-bandwidth memory. This is commonly used in AI data centers. As result, the more traditional and common DRAM will take a backseat in terms of production, leading to a shortage that will also drive the prices up .
The situation is similar to the crypto boom, which drove the prices of GPUs sky-high and made them difficult to get. We’re not sure how long this RAM shortage will last. Some have estimated it could go into 2028, but we’ll have to wait and see.
