Samsung is gearing up to unveil the Galaxy S26 series late next month, and the dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn claiming there are no major hardware upgrades.
A report from iNews24 claims Samsung is trying hard to keep the Galaxy S26 Ultra close to the Galaxy S25 Ultra price, which landed at about $1,300.
The snag is memory: smartphone makers reportedly pay up to three times more for the same RAM due to a brutal chip squeeze.
Some insiders reckon Samsung will cave and push the Galaxy S26 Ultra to $1,399 in the US, echoing the Galaxy S20 Ultra launch price.
Samsung is also said to be targeting a price below KRW 2 million (€1,167) in South Korea, which could keep the US figure parked at $1,299 if it pulls off the maths.
The catch is that keeping the sticker price steady does not mean keeping the deal sweet.
Samsung may scale back pre-order incentives, with the popular double-storage offer for early buyers reportedly on the chopping block.
The memory crunch is being blamed on the AI infrastructure land grab, where high-bandwidth memory and server-grade DDR5 are getting hoovered up fast.
Big tech names, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI, are snapping up the best gear for AI servers and hyperscale data centres.
Because HBM and enterprise memory make fatter margins, manufacturers like Micron, Samsung Device Solutions and SK Hynix have reportedly shifted output away from the low-power parts phones need.
That means fewer general-purpose and mobile memory chips are being made, higher prices for what is left, and a neat way to make “no price increase” feel like a technicality.
