Big downgrade: Some Android brands could offer just 4GB of RAM in their upcoming budget phones

Remember phones with 4GB of RAM? We considered that really impressive a decade ago, but it now seems laughable. However, AI could push smartphones back into that era — a time when 4GB of RAM was perfectly acceptable, and 8GB was flagship territory.

According to a Weibo post by leaker Fixed Focus Digital, several smartphone makers are planning to reduce the amount of RAM they install in their devices. The leaker claims that these brands will offer 8GB of RAM in the base variants of their mid-range smartphones, with 12GB RAM options for the top tier.

Budget phones, on the other hand, will reportedly come with 4GB of RAM in the base configuration and 6GB of RAM in the top variants. That’s a sharp drop from today’s budget phones. Currently, most brands offer at least 6GB of RAM on entry-level devices, with options going up to 8GB.

If you’re wondering why brands might be reducing the RAM they offer, it’s likely because of rising memory prices due to the AI boom. We’ve seen the cascading effects of this boom on consumer tech throughout 2026: brands have raised smartphone prices, and Apple even hiked the price of last year’s iPhone 17. If Fixed Focus Digital’s post is accurate, things could get even worse next year.

While 4GB of RAM was fine a few years ago, phones with 4GB of RAM will likely struggle to run Android 17 smoothly and reliably. That’s also the sentiment expressed by several commenters on the Weibo post. While companies like HUAWEI use their own non-Android HarmonyOS in China and can leverage hardware-software integration to eke out extra performance from 4GB of RAM, others probably won’t fare as well.

Last year, we tested memory management on Android devices and found that 8GB of RAM was pretty much the baseline for a good user experience. We also noted that while 4GB of RAM could let users perform basic productivity tasks, it wasn’t enough for typical multitasking. It’s unlikely that phones with 4GB of RAM will offer a smooth, lag-free experience in 2027.

Whether companies actually pull the trigger and drop budget phones down to 4GB of starting memory remains to be seen. Here’s hoping that’s not the case, and that we at least get 6GB of RAM as the standard entry-level configuration.