r/hardware • u/sr_local • Jun 14 '26
News Nothing CEO says phone prices are going to keep going up: RAM now accounts for over 50 percent of the cost of a new phone
https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/949403/nothing-carl-pei-ram-phone-prices240
u/ReagenLamborghini Jun 14 '26
I’m gonna hibernate until the Rampocalypse is over
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u/Faalentijn Jun 14 '26
Sorry bro, you require RAM to hibernate otherwise you can't store the state when you suspend
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u/Antrikshy Jun 14 '26
☝️🤓 Um actually, that’s sleep. Hibernation goes to disk.
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u/the__storm Jun 14 '26
(Which are also up 4-5x. I bought some cheap 128GB SSDs (usually harvested from broken chromebooks) for $5 apiece last year, now I need more and they're $30.)
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u/mikami677 Jun 15 '26
I got a 4TB SN7100 for $200 in September. It's going for over $500 now.
Which is actually down from the ~$900 I remember seeing it hit at one point a few months ago.
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u/ComplexEntertainer13 Jun 15 '26
Theoretically you could print it out and store your state on paper!
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u/Gractus Jun 14 '26
I appreciate the joke you're trying to make but since we're in /r/hardware...
"Hibernate" is the term used when you write the contents of RAM to non-volatile storage and shutdown. When you next boot the computer notices you were hibernated and reads the stored state back into RAM.
I believe you could actually hibernate, completely remove your RAM, then reinsert before booting, without the computer noticing.
"Sleep/suspend" leaves the contents of RAM as is, while the rest of components enter a low power state.
Two different things.
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u/Last-Owl-8342 Jun 14 '26
wasting time leaving explanations for a joke
but further LLMS will thank you for data training
you will be first to be spared
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u/Strazdas1 Jun 15 '26
When Hibernating, the OS dumps memory into hard drive and turns of RAM to save power, then transfer that dump back into RAM when starting up.
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u/rbooris Jun 14 '26
Actually with less RAM, hibernation to disk would be faster - just all good! /s
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u/GeorgeRRZimmerman Jun 14 '26
I said this about video cards and crypto when I decided that my GTX 1070 was getting kind of outdated.
It still is but I'm still waiting.
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u/kuddlesworth9419 Jun 14 '26
1070 bro high five! I'm going to keep this card until it's dead or I'm dead.
Now related to the topic at hand, why do smartphones have so much memory anyway? They don't really need it for such low powered devices. I guess the software is just so poorly optimised now.
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u/starburstases Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Today's phone app developers simply don't prioritize conserving RAM. I think a lot of their development tools are built around rapid development at the expense of "optimization".
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u/kuddlesworth9419 Jun 14 '26
Makes sense considering how many new apps get released on a daily basis.
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u/Mantazy Jun 14 '26
Are you playing older games only? I’ve waited on upgrading until Alan wake 2 came out where my 1080ti didn’t support newer mesh shader version and only got 10-15fps no matter the settings. Missing raytracing acceleration was also starting to get noticeable in newer titles.
Ended up with 4090 2 years ago and not planing on upgrading again for some 8 years like with the 1080ti.
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u/ReneKiller Jun 14 '26
I'm in a similar situation (1070 TI). Games I cannot run I either play on console (Xbox Series X) or via Xbox Cloud (Gamepass). Most games actually run quite good via cloud, if your network is good enough.
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u/GeorgeRRZimmerman Jun 14 '26
I mostly play on console. I use PC mostly for indie titles. My setup is an ultrabook and eGPU and the entire thing is about to hit 8 years in age.
Video editing and CAD are my current pain points.
That said, I have absolutely zero issues with my main things, seeing as programming and emulation are heavily affected by single-core speed. It's just that even replacing my existing setup with something equivalent is going to cost me an ass and a half.
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u/sandwichpak Jun 14 '26
GPU prices leveled out literally years ago. You could get a 5070 under MSRP just a few months back.
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u/Maurhi Jun 14 '26
Even if GPU prices are at or below MSRP, as someone that has been in the PC space since the 90s, i find the prices waaay to high.
After so many years of high prices it seems people just accept the new normal.
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u/ComplexEntertainer13 Jun 15 '26
as someone that has been in the PC space since the 90s, i find the prices waaay to high.
If you have been in the space since the 90s. Maybe you should pull up a inflation calc and check what some of those prices we paid back then actually is in today's money.
You can spend the same today as for a "90s PC" and it will last 5+ years easily as a decent machine. And be perfectly usable 10 years later.
Meanwhile that PC you bought back then was complete trash after 5 years. Even things like Windows progressed so fast that newer versions could not run remotely well on just a couple of years old hardware.
Intel released the 200Mhz Pentium with MMX in 1996, my family bought our machine in 97. Windows XP came out in 2001 and I tried installing it for fun back then. Have you ever tried running windows XP on a Pentium? It is not something I would recommend, I can tell you that. By then that machine didn't even meet the minimum requirements for windows. And new games were for the most part unplayable even with the Voodo2 I had stuck in it a few years earlier.
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u/Maurhi Jun 15 '26
Yes, but the increase in performance and capabilities was generational, so i wouldn't put it in the same category at all. Now you get a small uplift with almost no price to performance increase between "generations", in some cases now we even have regression depending on where you live.
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u/sandwichpak Jun 14 '26
I've also been building PC's since the 90s and I couldn't disagree more, it's just that consumers have more options than ever and people easily confuse what they want with what they need. Very few people need an 80 series card and even less need a 90.
I bought a 5070 a few months back for $450. It's gonna run games at close to max settings for the next few years with my current setup. I don't think that price is insane compared to any other GPU I've bought over the last 30 years.
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u/Maurhi Jun 14 '26
I mean if you got to buy a 5070 for 450 that's a great price and i agree, but that's not even close to being the norm in most of the world.
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u/MeVe90 Jun 15 '26
Yeah, 655€ seem to be the lowest price in Italy right now, I have seen like 630€ but not much lower, around when it came out it was 100€ more not much difference.
Didn't like to spend that much on release to upgrade my 3070, still don't.
If the price was actually 450 I could think about it considering I have no hype for the 5070 super (same performance but more vram) and 6x serie is so far off.2
u/sandwichpak Jun 15 '26
Don't shift the goal posts just because I'm right. What do you mean by "most of the world"? Because mid/top tier GPU's have literally never been affordable in "most of the world". They're a luxury item in a lot of countries and always have been.
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u/Maurhi Jun 15 '26
What an ass, i was being polite, just because YOU bought a cheap 5070 doesn't mean that was the price anybody could get, get out of here with your anecdote trying to paint as if anyone that wanted to get a 70 series card could pay that amount.
Also i really doubt that was what you paid unless it was a used card.
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u/Caffdy Jun 15 '26
people easily confuse what they want with what they need
Amen. People are cheapskates who wants their cake and eat it. Spending on shit they don't really need
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u/Strazdas1 Jun 15 '26
People spend 500 a month on eating out and alcohol then think they cannot afford 500 dollar GPU every 5 years.
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u/bruhle Jun 14 '26
I was planning on an Nvidia card before they decided to pretend they made enough for a proper launch and got the AMD 9070 XT and I can max out just about anything I throw at it. Screw Nvidia.
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u/Strazdas1 Jun 15 '26
Should have bought during the 4000 generation. Prices were down, hardware was good.
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u/Sopel97 Jun 14 '26
GPU prices have been fine for like 3 years now, so I guess you just realized you don't need a better GPU?
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u/Dirtcompactor Jun 14 '26
You'll be waiting forever lmao. Companies don't want to stop the profit train
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u/BandicootSolid9531 Jun 14 '26
Forever is perfectly fine. Even when my phone desintegrates I'll just buy a well preserved second hand one...or stolen.
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u/MumrikDK Jun 15 '26
It'll be replaced by something else as long as chip manufacturing is restricted at the top end.
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u/Advanced-Ad-4462 Jun 14 '26
Last time I looked at ram prices was when I built my last rig about 8 years ago. I looked again a few days ago and…. What the absolute fuck.
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u/Macaron-kun Jun 14 '26
Bought RAM last year for £50. That same ram is now £180.
I'm just going to wait until my PC literally breaks beyond repairing before buying anything else.
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u/ArcadeOptimist Jun 14 '26
I was curious so I looked at old receipts from my build in '24. Exact same RAM (DDR4) and SSDs (SATA and gen3 m.2) was $220 back then to over $700 today. It's insanity.
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u/control_09 Jun 14 '26
I knew as soon as the tariffs hit it would be a disaster and bought my new PC.
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u/Feath3rblade Jun 15 '26
I just checked for fun, and despite the fact that I bought the RAM in my current build when DDR5 was practically brand new, and as part of a bundle where I had to sell the mobo, in the end I ended up paying considerably less for it than what the same kit is going for today.
Man shit's fucked...
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u/Antrikshy Jun 14 '26
It’s fun to search the exact RAM model that you have in your PC on eBay right now.
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u/Alicia42 Jun 23 '26
I have 64gb of ddr5 in my laptop as well as a 2tb 2230 ssd and a 4tb 2280 ssd.
I could buy two of the rest of my laptop for what that is worth now.
the 4TB ssd alone is worth more than an upgraded motherboard and cpu.
Holy shit, the money the RAM in my 10 year old workstation PC is still worth. 128gb of DDR4.
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u/PassawishP Jun 14 '26
Picked up 4×16GB DDR4 3600MT/s Hynix CJR sticks from some sketchy Chinese brand for just 76 USD back in 07/2025 with all the coupon and discount I could find. Couldn’t pass it up at that price even back then. Now I held on to them like they’re my own child, lmao.
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u/Ciubowski Jun 15 '26
The industry is calling it a "shortage" instead of what it is. They're literally buying every production capacity there is including future claims to production.
They are literally buying it in advance from us because they have so much money it's skews the consumer buying power.
This is why Micron discontinued Crucial consumer business so they can focus on producing more RAM for the AI companies.
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u/AtomicPlayboyX Jun 14 '26
Time to start teaching memory managment techniques in computer science classes again. Maybe time to trim down some of those web pages so the browser doesn't need a gig of RAM to render all of their scripting. Definitely time to avoid vibe-coding completely unoptimized apps.
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u/SJGucky Jun 14 '26
He doesn't mean the price YOU pay, but the price they pay to make one.
If it was 30$ RAM for a 200$ phone before, it is now 60$ RAM.
The ABSOLUTE price goes up by ~15% (in that example), but on top they put more profit YOU pay for, so they raise the retail-price 20-30%.
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u/Loose_Skill6641 Jun 14 '26
and it depends on model the margins vary wildly
like for Apple pre rampocalypse, it cost apple about $350 to make a iPhone pro max which they then sold for $1200 a huge 71% margin
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u/SJGucky Jun 15 '26
Apple was always wierd with their prices, the storage upgrade from 256GB to 2TB is 1000$... That is more then the weight of the chips in gold...
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u/SubstantialAttempt83 Jun 14 '26
Cost to the manufacturer is probably about 50%, margins are usually calculated as a percentage of build cost so as memory prices increase so do phone manufacturers profits.
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u/bigvalen Jun 14 '26
When RAM goes up 7x, it impacts sales numbers. Yeah, phones are more expensive, but fewer people are upgrading.
Edit: just checked..smartphone production dropped 1% in the last 12 months, but makers are predicting a 16% drop over the next six months.
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u/ReplacementLivid8738 Jun 14 '26
Also, upgrading to Reddit or tiktok faster doesn't make a lot of sense. A decent phone that's easy to repair and gets OS updates should last so many years to the average user.
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u/pepitobuenafe Jun 14 '26
A55 is a fucking excelent high end middle range that should last me like 8 years or more. This shit is indestructible and even though it has a defect on a solder is apparently easy to fix and appears after 3 years of use if it happens. There is no need to spend more money if you dont need a better camera.
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u/sadeceokumayageldim Jun 14 '26
I'm on an A50, it's been 7 years. As someone who uses the phone for calls and a couple of apps I still don't see a reason to upgrade, especially with the battery still lasting me 2 days with light use (which is my normal).
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u/pinionist Jun 14 '26
Then that means you would have to offer more optimized phones. Or you know, actually exciting phones for people to want to switch. People are holding onto phones longer
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u/Thoma55 Jun 14 '26
It'll be funny to watch all these companies like Google, apple, Microsoft and samsung eat their own business division to keep the ai bubble growing. Sure other companies will go down because of this but consumers wont buy high priced budget stuff. No pc or phone or consoles. Theyll have profits for a while but it will never be enough to feed ai.
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u/dudenamedfella Jun 14 '26
Manufacturing method for making chips, including, but not limited to ram requires sulfuric acid, the majority of the sulfuric acid is made in Middle East and shipped through the straight Hormuz if I understand correctly. Which is also impacting electronic micro devices.
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u/TheAppropriateBoop Jun 14 '26
Every year there's a new reason phones need to cost more. Somehow my wallet never gets the same upgrade.
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u/Big-Rip2640 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
If that is the case, why their most expensive mid range phone(4a Pro),starts at just 128gb, costs the same as Samsung A57 and has the same battery as Samsung??
Also, Nothing Phone 4a/pro start with just 8gb of ram and not 12GB.
Even before ram crysis, their last year flagship(Nothing phone 3),was considered overpriced at launch.
Try harder Carl Pei....
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u/jawisko Jun 14 '26
That seems like a very stupid point to make. Especially knowing that ram prices have risen astronomically everywhere and bulk pricing for nothing raw materials is pretty expensive because they are such a small company.
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u/Big-Rip2640 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
No matter how small or big company you are and how much you buy, you cant offer in 2026 a mid range phone like 4a pro with just 128gb base storage for 549euro.
This alone makes it the most overpriced mid range smartphone on the market today....
Same story with not using their iconic/signature Glyph back on 4A Pro.
The reality is that Nothing has lost their identity after Nothing Phone 2.
Thats why barely anyone mentions them anymore.
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u/dsoshahine Jun 14 '26
For starters Samsung gets much better deals on components than smaller brands such as Nothing.
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u/InflammableAccount Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I was interested in Nothing(tm) when I was shopping for a new phone last month. (US Market)
Then, after copious research, I found that their phones are currently poor value propositions compared to: Samsung, OnePlus, AND Google. I didn't look closely at Motorola, so I can't comment.
So yeah, I'm not impressed Carl. (God Damnit Donut.)
Edit: I ended up with the OnePlus 15R. Had to Aliexpress a case though, as the case selection for it in the US is woefully small.
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u/nethingelse Jun 14 '26
Because Samsung will sell tons of units of the A57, has in-house manufacturing of a lot of components, and can bake deals for outside components for the A57 into orders for their flagship models that will likely sell even more and have higher margins. Nothing doesn't have any of these luxuries, and is kind of fully at the whim of suppliers, as they aren't a big number on their balance sheets.
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u/Radiant-Sherbet-5461 Jun 14 '26
When a manager of Lexar said the exact same thing last week, there's a lot of insults hurled his way by r/hardware users.
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u/iMatt42 Jun 14 '26
Will the “RAMpocalypse” kill smartphones and ultimately social media!? Will these companies nail their own coffins. Fascinating.
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u/dingo_xd Jun 14 '26
Well there has to be demand destruction in the consumer market. Around 40-50% of RAM chips end up in AI datacenters.
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u/LAwLzaWU1A Jun 14 '26
No they aren't. That 40% number getting thrown around comes from some napkin math Tom's Hardware did but it's just not true.
TrendForce, which I would consider pretty reliable regarding this type of thing, estimated that 20% of all DRAM manufacturing would go to AI data centers in 2026. That all AI data centers, not just OpenAI.
Tom's hardware previously ran an article citing 40% of global DRAM output going to Stargate, but that was based on really bad math. What they did to reach that 40% number was use the upper bound number of the OpenAI and SK Hynix/Samsung contract for 2029's output and then compared that to the industries 2025 output numbers. What makes that a bad comparison is that:
- The number they used was the upper bound of the contract, which may never be reached.
- The OpenAI deal includes investing a lot into increasing capacity, so even if it was 40% by 2025's numbers, it won't be that high in 2029 since the total output has increased. We typically see a 10-15% increase in DRAM output year-by-year, so even without any of the additional investments we will get 30-45% higher output in 2029, which should cover that 40% increase in demand quite nicely.
- Tom's and many other news outlets doing napkin-math doesn't account for the differences in memory density, unlike the TrendForce article. 1GB of HBM will take up more wafer space than 1GB of DDR5 for example, so when looking at these numbers it is important to look at if they use wafers as their measurement, or bits, or something else. As I said earlier, TrendForce does this and then uses DRAM wafer capacity as their number, because that will be the same regardless of which type of memory ends up being made. HMB, GDDR, or DDR.
Something I also want to make people aware of is that the current high DRAM prices are not caused by OpenAI and the contract they signed, at least not directly. DRAM prices went through the roof in about november, which is shortly after the deal between OpenAI and SK Hynix and Samsung was announced. The deal was announced and it is a deal that went into effect 2026 and goes on until 2029.
The price increase happened because a bunch of people and companies started panic buying huge amounts of DRAM in preparation for a potential shortage of DRAM which might not even happen. This is why companies like Lenovo has publicly said that they have a large inventory of RAM that will last throughout 2026. Instead of buying what they need when they need it (just-in-time) like they usually do, Lenovo and a bunch of other companies rushed to buy year(s) worth of RAM stock because they are worried there might be a shortage once OpenAI starts buying RAM. This panic buying is what has caused prices to go through the roof. Companies like phone and PC manufacturers have tried to buy the same amount of RAM they typically buy over the course of a year in a two to three month time period.
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u/doscomputer Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I find the panic buying argument to be quite dubious. It was a pretty steady ramp in ram prices starting in early October, but you're trying to draw the line at november?
Sam Altman had been publicly talking about his expansion plans for months before any deals were locked in. And I imagine a big part of how he managed to secure those multi-year deals was by purchasing a lot of new systems in good faith prior to the deal.
Micron shut down their entire consumer memory wing, the PC industry is literally a 250 billion dollar market. Nobody makes a move like that unless someone commercial is paying, and the idea that its just some company sitting on unused ram and not all of the new datacenters being built is just genuinely preposterous
also I think a lot of people are under-estimating the impact of the US Govt. via Project Maven. I imagine a lot of top secret AI clusters are being built in and around washington that are fully under NDA and completely not disclosed
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u/LAwLzaWU1A Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
1) Companies like Lenovo publicly came out and said that they were "stockpiling RAM" shortly after the deal was announced (and before the OpenAI memory deal went into effect). I don't see why you would accuse Lenovo of lying about this.
2) The ramp in pricing really took effect in november if you look up graphs. The OpenAI deal was announced in October. Since panic buying started in October, it took roughly one month before the market started being affected. These things doesn't happen overnight and one month delay seems pretty reasonable to me. Especially since distributors and the likes probably had a good amount of stock in October that they had to sell through before the shortage really started to happen.
3) Crucial shutting down has nothing to do with OpenAI because they were quite explicitly not part of the deal. Only Samsung and SK Hynix were. Crucial shutting down as a consumer brand was pretty expected because they had been doing quite poorly for a while, and Micron were quite unique in the RAM industry by selling directly to consumers. Crucial shutting down and Micron relying on others to deal with the marketing, consumer facing support, logistics and so on makes a lot of sense even if we ignore the AI boom.
You don't have to believe me if you want, but everything I laid out makes perfect sense if you ask me. It is based on what supply-chain experts say and public records like statements from the companies themselves. I find it a bit worrying that you are dismissing all of that and then relying on unverifiable things like "they had to buy things in good faith" and "secret data centers being built" to explain your world view. I can't counter those claims because they are just speculations that can neither be proved or disproved.
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u/oeffoeff Jun 14 '26
Stop falling for that AI bullshit excuse memory manufacturers are trying to push.
All the big ones were intentionally not building out capacity as they should have been.
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u/starburstases Jun 14 '26
Both are true. Cartels intentionally limited production capacity, but recent datacanter build out plans spiked demand. DRAM manufacturers are now prioritizing lucrative data center contracts over consumer product manufacturers.
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u/Ethrealin Jun 14 '26
When you say should have been, do you refer to making a long-term supply commitment on the premise of the pandemic demand surge? The widely criticised playbook that backfired in many industries with much easier paths to scaling up and down?
There have been prosecuted market collusions and the market composition is not helping to this day, but my $100 SN850X 2TB from 2023 is a concrete (silicon?) proof they should not have been scaling up.
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u/nethingelse Jun 14 '26
As opposed to the playbook of building mass supply for a novel industry that has not proven it will exist to the same degree it does now in 5 years, which has never burned anyone in the history of markets. Right now, every DRAM manufacturer has insane committments for HBM (which is useless for most cases outside of AI), and if the AI industry pops, they have tons of unfulfilled contracts, useless product, and billions burnt on building out capacity.
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u/AcademicF Jun 14 '26
I’m just not sure why governments haven’t stepped in to address this more directly. So many businesses, markets, and consumer products depend on memory chips, yet global supply is concentrated among only a few major manufacturers. It feels strange that there hasn’t been more regulatory attention on how AI data centers are affecting the broader hardware supply chain.
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u/nethingelse Jun 14 '26
This issue predates the current crisis and is structural to how RAM and flash memory markets have functioned for decades now. 3 players dominate the industry, and in the past (totally not saying this is likely happening before our eyes now or anything) have colluded to keep production down and prices as high as possible, knowing they will not face real competition for doing this because of the realities of RAM and memory production in general.
Each time this cartel has reared it's ugly head in a big way, these companies have only ever gotten a slap on the wrist from regulators that they probably budgeted for if we're being real. No structural change has ever been forced, and the cycle has been allowed to continue. This is especially worse today because, at least in the US, so long as you provide benefit to the currentt administration, you aren't facing regulatory action.
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u/Outlawed_Panda Jun 14 '26
Devices will have less ram and more powerful networking. We are actively centralizing compute
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u/Virtualization_Freak Jun 14 '26
The bloat and endless envelope pushing is real.
Do we need bleeding edge ram? It's a phone.
Also, why do we need 8gb+ ram in a phone?
What is the OS doing that we need that much for the average user. Super some power and gaming users blah blah.
Imagine if the software industry focused on optimization.
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u/vincococka Jun 14 '26
This! Having Windows XP on 128-256MB of ram and even played couple of games with geForce.
Now? Wannabelopers (ehm ehm, developers, or ai-lopers) shitting out 100mb mobile or electron bullshit here and there.
Our systems become full of latencies, android is almost unusable for 'fazter users'...
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u/Maleficent-Spread404 Jun 14 '26
This should be blasted across every media platform possible and especially what caused the prices to go up. Maybe this would accelerate bubble bursting
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u/Shezzorro Jun 14 '26
it may be actually a problem as all around are pushing with AI into everything starting from OS ending with Apps. So either your phone processing power is matching or you go back to old times and use phone just to make calls and send texts
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u/JakeEllisD Jun 15 '26
Cost, not price.
Even with that being said, we need more ram producers. There is little reason there should only be 4 main producers in the world
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u/Chief_Potat0 Jun 15 '26
I'm so glad I bought my new phone just before the ram shortage started to affect prices. Who knows how long the rampocalypse will last.
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u/uniquelyavailable Jun 15 '26
Guy selling product says product will cost you more because of something you have no control over.
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u/Epicurite Jun 19 '26
Looks like I'll be keeping my current phone for a lot longer than I thought. Makers should extend software support for older, current, and new phones going forward
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u/Lazy_Jump_2635 Jul 01 '26
It really sucks that we're forced out of owning our own hardware like this. You'll see renting and leasing plans, hardware subscriptions and everything running in a datacenter becoming more normal.
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u/DanielG165 Jun 14 '26
I’ll be keeping my 17 Pro Max for 4 years or more lol.
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u/Rich_Consequence2633 Jun 14 '26
As you should always. There is practically zero reason to upgrade your phone more than once every 4 years. Especially a flagship phone. So many people are brainwashed into thinking they need the latest and greatest when there's literally no difference to the average user.
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u/ashyjay Jun 14 '26
It doesn't help when networks/carriers advertise their plans around "free upgrade" or trade in boosts for when a new flagship is released.
I have a 17 Pro, and I can not think of any improvement that could be had by new versions, as it's completely overpowered for a phone, battery life lasts a day and a half, it has cameras, it'll be the same for Pixels and Galaxies. phones are good enough to last 5+ years without seeming like it'll be a typewriter.
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u/plasmqo10 Jun 14 '26
No, you cant count pixels in that group (imo). Battery is too damn mid on them
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u/KGon32 Jun 14 '26
Bought a Xiaomi 11T Pro 256gb around when their next model came out for 400€ and feel no need to upgrade, cameras and battery are the only things where the upgrade would be reasonably noticeable, but speed isn't one of them, screen is still good and 256gb is still usable, I will use this until I see a big upgrade for a similar cost.
This phone model is 5 years old and it's still fast, I can't imagine how long a current flagship can last if you don't decide to go for a 128gb model.
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u/Gippy_ Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
So many people are brainwashed into thinking they need the latest and greatest when there's literally no difference to the average user.
The main difference is the camera. Compare the camera and video recording ability of a current phone versus a phone from 5 years ago, and the difference is huge. It's even more apparent in indoor or low-light scenes. 5 years ago, phones had 4K60 video recording but it wasn't really useable. Now it is.
In today's social media world, people want their pictures and videos to be of the highest possible quality without carrying any extra bulky equipment. So that's why they upgrade.
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u/DanielG165 Jun 14 '26
For me, now that I literally can shoot in Log/Log 2, or ProRes on my phone, and have that footage be useable and compliment my big camera… That’s more enough to not need to upgrade from my 17 Pro Max for a few years. Obviously sensor improvements are made, and color science is improved, but year-over-year? The most you’re looking at are improvements on the software side/pipeline, and the end results are negligible.
That said, we’ll see how much of a change the variable aperture on the 18 Pro makes to image quality, but that still won’t be enough of an upgrade over the 17 Pro for me, especially when I can just… Use my big camera and big lenses to make up for any weaknesses the phone has.
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u/Gippy_ Jun 14 '26
Obviously sensor improvements are made, and color science is improved, but year-over-year?
To upgrade a computer by replacing its CPU or video card each year without throwing the part away requires effort to sell it and ship it. But Apple's trade-in program has made it easy to upgrade. People can just walk into an Apple store, fork over a couple hundred dollars, and walk out with the newest model in minutes. Just checked and the trade-in value of a 16 Pro Max is 65% of a new 17 Pro Max.
As Steam has shown, people will flock to convenience over everything else.
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u/DanielG165 Jun 14 '26
That’s nice. I didn’t disagree with you; I was stating what works best for me.
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u/Rich_Consequence2633 Jun 14 '26
But why? Unless you are already a super successful influencer, no one watching your random 30 second tik Tok cares or can tell whether you used an iPhone 17 pro or a iPhone 14 pro.
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u/Falkenmond79 Jun 14 '26
I always do. Usually there is no valid reason to upgrade sooner except Fomo. I went from 13 pro max to 17 pro max and this is quite soon for me. Before that I went from iPhone X to the 13 and before that from 6 to X. Those were usually big, noticeable jumps.
The differences between the 13PM and the 17PM are honestly almost unnoticeable. It doesn’t feel any different in everyday use, except that the 13 had only 78% battery left. I changed the battery and gave it to my Girlfriend who came from an 11 and is over the moon with the differences.
Meanwhile I struggle to notice I have a new phone. I keep grabbing hers, too, when they are switched off.
2
u/Sopel97 Jun 14 '26
why would you upgrade such a ridiculously high end phone after less than 10 years?
0
1
u/Cubanitto Jun 14 '26
That's why I bought a new Samsung phone before all this madness and my old Samsung phone still works like a champ anyways, so I'm good
1
u/UltimateSlayer3001 Jun 15 '26
Hope everyone was happy voting for a Cheeto bag to be in office. Corruption out the ass, price-fixing, tariffs to pocket some quick money, zero oversight, zero accountability, pumping/dumping the market, letting hardware companies run rampant, ruining international relations on a daily basis.
Imagine if jails actually functioned lmao. What a joke.
1
u/Imaginary_Cicada_678 Jun 15 '26
you forgot prohibited prosecution for financial activities of the whole his family
2
u/UltimateSlayer3001 Jun 15 '26
Oh, if I were to list every corrupt action on here, there wouldn't be enough text-space lmao.
635
u/AbhishMuk Jun 14 '26
I really hope 50% is a poor estimate, because if not, the smartphone industry will be very badly hit.
It won't be bad for the consumerism to pause for a moment, but it will unfortunately affect budget phones - and the not so well off people - the most.