DRAM shortage may force smartphones to cut memory capacity

Due to a DRAM shortage, the smartphone market may roll back several years in terms of memory specifications. A new report says manufacturers could once again begin releasing budget models with 4 GB of RAM, while the transition of flagship devices to 16 GB will slow down.

This is reported by wccftech.

How smartphones may change in the future

A prolonged DRAM shortage could force companies to revise future smartphone configurations downward. Manufacturers may "dilute" specifications: entry-level devices could come with just 4 GB of RAM, while mid-range models that typically launched with 12 GB may be limited to 6–8 GB or 8 GB instead of 12 GB in their base versions.

The shortage will also affect the top segment: the pace at which flagship lineups move to 16 GB of RAM is expected to slow. While maximum configurations such as 24 GB have appeared on the market before, such variants may become rare amid the current situation.

Companies like Samsung are already moving away from HBM production and refocusing on DDR5, reflecting pressure related to availability and profitability across different segments.

The bulk of smartphone sales comes from affordable models. In the third quarter of 2025, the best-selling Android smartphone was the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G, which ships with 8 GB of RAM. This may indicate that if specifications do decline, consumers will have to increase their budgets to maintain a familiar level of memory.

Among the potential "upsides" of such a downgrade is increased pressure on Google from manufacturers to better optimize Android for devices with smaller amounts of RAM — similar to Apple’s approach with iOS. At the same time, in the era of on-device AI processing, larger memory capacities still offer clear advantages, and earlier estimates even pointed to 20 GB as a future "mainstream" benchmark for such tasks.

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