- TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Tech
- NewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All News
- MobileCloseMobilePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Mobile
Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
FollowSee All by Sean Hollister
Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
FollowSee All by Sean Hollister
The Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus are “more of the same for more money,” my colleague Allison Johnson reported this week. Now, Samsung is confirming what we previously only suspected: RAMageddon is partly to blame.
Samsung’s Won-Joon Choi, the COO of its mobile business, tells The Verge that the memory shortage alone made a “significant contribution” to the price. All the increasing material costs factored into the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus costing $100 more than their predecessors this year, as did tariffs, but the memory was “significant,” he tells me.
The S26 does come with double the storage this year at its higher price, with 256GB rather than 128GB, though its $899 price tag is still $40 higher than an S25 with 256GB cost at launch. And though tariffs may have been a factor as well, Samsung has hiked the price in other regions too, not just the United States. The pricier S26 Ultra does come with intriguing upgrades, however, including a built-in privacy screen and the largest vapor chamber cooling system in a phone.
Samsung chip partner Qualcomm warned in its February quarterly results that it was seeing a big dip in its handset business “100 percent” due to the memory shortage, telling investors that the AI industry’s appetite for components would likely define the entire scale of the phone industry all year long.
And today, IDC is forecasting the largest drop ever recorded in worldwide smartphone shipments, a dip of 12.9 percent, across 2026. “What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,” writes IDC.
- Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Sean Hollister
- MobileCloseMobilePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Mobile
- NewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All News
- SamsungCloseSamsungPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Samsung
- TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Tech
- Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
- Hands on: I’m super impressed with the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s new Privacy Display
- Google Gemini can book an Uber or order food for you on Pixel 10 and Galaxy S26
- Google and Samsung just launched the AI features Apple couldn’t with Siri
- Corsair is halting Drop sales after March 25th
A free daily digest of the news that matters most.
This is the title for the native ad
