Smartphone prices are set to rise sharply — Here’s what to know

The new Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 and Dimensity 9500 top-end chips promise twice the AI performance of their predecessors. Because of this, manufacturers are discussing bringing back configurations with 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, which could increase the final price of smartphones.

GizmoChina reports on this.

How will the prices of flagship smartphones change?

According to a Digital Chat Station leak, Qualcomm is developing a chip with peak performance of up to 100 trillion operations per second. This potentially changes the approach to memory. To avoid a bottleneck, brands plan to return to 24 GB of RAM, which they abandoned last year due to high costs.

The Dimensity 9500 is expected to demonstrate comparable AI capabilities. Preliminary Geekbench 6 tests attribute it with over 3,900 points in single-core mode and over 11,000 points in multi-core mode. For comparison, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 reportedly surpasses 4,000 and 11,000, respectively.

These results confirm that the next Android flagship phones will not only focus on processor speed, but also on local AI computing, which requires massive RAM.

Last year, mass demand stopped at 12–16 GB of RAM, but the AI race is raising the bar. The five largest manufacturers are preparing premium models with 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. While the leak does not mention specific amounts, the increased memory capacity will likely be reflected in the price.

Earlier, we wrote a few reasons to switch to a Keypad phone.

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