You may have heard the term “shrinkflation” used for a growing number of grocery products, like how your cereal costs more every year even though there is less Captain Crunch in the box. Similarly, in 2026, everything from phones to PC components to boutique gaming products is not only more expensive, they’re also getting worse.
The top major semiconductor companies who create the vast majority of memory components include the likes of SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron. All three have adjusted their businesses for the sake of making the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) necessary for constructing AI datacenters—those same big tech-backed construction projects have residents up in arms in small towns across the U.S.
You can see the ravages of shrinkflation play out with major smartphone brands as large as Google. The semi-reliable Telegram leaker Mystic Leaks (via PhoneArena) posted a range of supposed specs for the upcoming Pixel 11 lineup. There doesn’t seem to be any one killer feature, even though the upcoming Pixel 11 Pro XL could receive a new range of camera sensors. At the same time, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold may get downgraded to 12GB of RAM. That’s 4GB less than the 16GB on the previous Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Google will have a hard time justifying the new Fold if it costs the same or more as the 2025 model.
Those upcoming Pixel phones may also lose their coveted thermometer feature and replace it with a tiny RGB LED array akin to the Nothing Phone 3 Glyph Matrix. Already, Google’s latest midrange phone—the Pixel 10a—offered no discernible upgrade over the Pixel 9a for the same $500 price.
The problem is that tech companies have fewer choices than ever. They can either hurt performance or raise prices. Framework, the maker of boutique, repairable laptops, has hiked prices of its RAM modules again and again over the last few months. Its new Framework 13 Pro laptop is one of its most expensive yet, in no small part thanks to the ballooning price of LPDDR5X RAM and M.2 SSDs. Nvidia recently unleashed a 12GB VRAM version of its mobile RTX 5070 GPU for laptops. While on paper it sounded like a way to offer better graphics performance on lower-end GPUs, the 12GB 5070 module of a Framework Laptop 16 costs $1,200. That’s $500 more than than the 8GB module.
Motorola has opted to both raise prices and constrain memory. The new 2026 version of the Razr flip foldable phones now costs $800, up from $700 on the 2025 model. It now starts with 128GB of storage instead of 256GB. The phone is still one of the best deals for a flip foldable for U.S. buyers, but you may be better off finding a cheaper, older model. The 2026 Razr+ features the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chip that the 2025 had last year. At the very least, Motorola upgraded the Razer+’s battery from a 4,000mAh capacity to 4,500mAh. But they’re essentially the same phones as last year, though with a 50-megapixel ultrawide instead of a 2x telephoto camera lens.
Last October, PlayStation 5 slim models saw their system storage slip from 1TB to 825GB. Memory costs are strangling smaller companies even more than larger brands. AYN, the maker of niche retro handhelds, announced last month that it had downgraded the beloved AYN Thor dual-screen handheld’s storage spec. It now uses UFS 3.1 standard storage, with read and write speeds that are far below that of UFS 4.0. The handheld maker then added another 16GB RAM option and hiked the cost of the maximum 1TB storage configuration to $550.
PC components are similarly downgrading their specifications for the sake of keeping prices low. Taiwanese PC components manufacturer ASRock worked with DRAM manufacturers to develop its own variety of “affordable” DUDIMM DDR5 modules. In a nutshell, this variety of RAM sticks offers half the bandwidth and density of your standard stick of DDR5 memory. These components will supposedly come with Intel 600, 700, and 800-series chipsets, according to Intel general manager of its enthusiast channel Robert Hallock.
Korean tech news outlet The Elec reported that the next generation of RAM standard, DDR6, is now fully in development by all three major RAM makers. The new standard promises faster data transfer speeds up to 8.4Gbps. We likely won’t see hide nor hair of DDR6 until 2028 at the earliest. At the same time, these companies are telling consumers RAM prices won’t come down for another two years or more. And in that time, our gadgets will not only get more expensive—they’ll get worse.
Nobody is safe, not even Apple. Last week, Apple silently discontinued its former $600 entry-level 2024 Mac mini with its 256GB memory spec. Now, Apple’s pint-sized desktop costs $800 and you have to go for the 512GB version. In a recent earnings call, outgoing CEO Tim Cook said there were chip shortages impacting “several Mac models.” It seems we’ll have to suffer more and more abuse long before we’ll see the faster memory most couldn’t possibly afford.
Read the full article here
