That ASUS Zenfone 2 was presented at the CES 2015 with one fact that stood out above all the others: it had 4 GB of RAM. That seemed exaggerated. “Who needed 4 GB on a cell phone?” we asked ourselves. It didn’t take too long until we saw that this figure became the norm, and it didn’t take much longer until we moved to 8, 12 or 16GB RAM. It seemed like we could only go further, but no. Everything indicates that in 2026 we will again see mobile phones with 4 GB of RAM in certain ranges. like him Pixel 3a of the image, a mobile six years ago. There it is nothing.
what has happened. The perfect storm with AI and data centers has caused DRAM and NAND memories become a luxury. Prices have skyrocketed and the manufacturers of these components are already warning that this situation could continue. And in that situation it appears a prediction from TrendForce analysts: that mobile manufacturers could resurrect hardware configurations that seemed extinct, such as smartphones with 4 GB of RAM as standard in the entry range by 2026.
less for the same. The trigger for this return to the past is the aforementioned increase in memory prices projected for the first months of 2026. This will cause significant cost pressure on large manufacturers, who are seeing how memory occupies an increasing percentage in their list of materials. And if they don’t want to raise the prices of their devices, they will do something that we don’t like at all: reduce technical specifications.
Android phones, the most affected. This scenario fully affects the entire Android ecosystem, especially in the medium and low ranges. In them, the amount of RAM had traditionally been a key factor for the marketing of these devices, but to prevent prices from skyrocketing, manufacturers will foreseeably be forced to cut specifications. The question is how not having 6 or 8 GB of RAM on the mobile will affect the fluidity of the Android experience.
The paradox of AI on mobile. The most ironic thing is that this price increase is caused by the rise of AI and data centers, but if we have mobile phones with less RAM, we will not be able to take full advantage of AI. The local models that our phones use precisely benefit from having a lot of RAM, so cutting this specification precisely cuts the capacity of those local AI models.
microSD slot back. Curiously, this crisis may also bring back an old ally of mobile users on tight budgets: the microSD slot. Taking into account that NAND memories have also increased in price, it is reasonable to think that we will not see mobile phones with large capacities at acceptable prices either. That opens the door to boost again the option to expand that storage using microSD cards.
And 8 GB laptops. For many years we had to put up with manufacturers offering laptops with 8 GB of RAM as standard. In recent times we have seen how the figure of 16 GB of RAM finally seemed to have settled, but according to TrendForce, although these models will continue to be offered, the ones that will be distributed the most will be the 8 GB ones again in the mid-range. If we want more of that, we will probably notice it clearly in the price. This is bad news for all users, but perhaps especially for the world of gaming, which has always gone one step further in terms of hardware requirements.
The era of cheap and abundant memory is over. If the forecasts are already bad for the first quarter of 2026, they are even worse for the second quarter of next year. According to TrendForce, this will be when “more significant price fluctuations” will occur in the PC and laptop market. The moment also coincides with the celebration in June of Computex, the most important fair for manufacturers of desktop and laptop computers.
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