Technologies

RAM Shortage Could Kill Budget Phones: The Latest Predictions at MWC 2026

Skyrocketing memory costs mean bleaker projections than even the worst predictions analysts made before.

The race to build AI infrastructure has gobbled up so much memory that prices have skyrocketed, with analysts predicting that product costs will rise as a result. But the outlook is far worse than anticipated. New reports and forecasts suggest that the RAM shortage could prompt manufacturers of cheaper devices to reduce or even stop production for some time.

Smartphone shipments are expected to drop by 13% through 2026 compared with last year, according to the International Data Corporation. This won’t just be a temporary crisis, but «a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,» Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for Worldwide Client Devices at IDC, had previously said in a statement.

When reached at MWC 2026, Jeronimo predicted that this impact won’t happen immediately. Phone sales will stay pretty static over the first quarter of the year (which is almost over) as distributors buy as much stock as they can, but the shortage will start affecting phone production around the second quarter, between April and June.

Phones are already getting more expensive, as analysts predicted. The Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus, which both launched with a $100 price hike over their predecessors — though they also bumped the minimum storage to 256GB from 128GB. But the premium segment likely won’t be as affected as lower-cost, higher-volume phones, said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

«That’s why you’re already seeing the Chinese [phone manufacturers] have to jack up prices already,» Sag said.

With the shortage, RAM prices are spiking, reaching three times last year’s levels, according to a Counterpoint Research report released at the end of February. The cheapest devices, already on thin margins, will likely see their profits evaporate. At that point, it’s not worth selling those phones.

«Some vendors are telling us that they are considering leaving that [budget] segment entirely, because if you sell a phone for $150, and half the cost is memory, where will you make money? There’s no point in selling products, right?» Jeronimo said.

If the cheapest budget segment drops out of the phone industry over the next year, that’s 10% of the global market that will be gone, Jeronimo noted.

The shortage is already affecting plans for the prices of phones set to launch. At MWC 2026, several phones were shown off without finalized prices, like the Unihertz Titan 2 Elite shown off at MWC that is soon being sold on Kickstarter. Before the RAM shortage, the price of an upcoming phone would be set weeks or months in advance of its release to store shelves. Now, it’s too risky to name a price until just before it’s sold. They just might not have enough memory to even supply the first batch of products at the preset price, Jeronimo said, and potentially raise prices thereafter.

As an example, the base Xiaomi 17 recently launched at 999 euros, but Jeronimo predicted that «the price they announced on stage is not the price they [will] see [the phone at]. The price in the store, in many operations, will be 100 euros more than what they said on stage,» he said.

When will the RAM crisis end?

Unlike last year’s tariffs and the financial fluctuations that phone-makers largely absorbed, the RAM shortage is unavoidable — there’s simply a lot less of these components to go around.

«This is not a short-term thing,» Jeronimo said. «You cannot build 1,000 factories in three or four months. [That would] take two to three years.»

At IDC’s current predictions, the crisis won’t last quite that long — only one and a half to two years, Jeronimo clarified. That could be shortened if other, smaller-tier suppliers start producing memory and alleviating the shortage, but the conditions he reported are dire, with RAM manufacturers requiring payment up-front for periodic shipments with the anticipation that the next slew of units could cost more.

But IDC’s analyst also put to bed another potential mitigation that had been floated late last year — that manufacturers would reverse their previous course of increasing RAM with each generation and actually trim it in the next. Even if it were cheaper to use less memory in phones, it would diminish the experience too much, causing too many retailers to return their phones for poor performance, Jeronimo explained. RAM isn’t just used to run AI models — it also lets people keep multiple apps open and operating at once.

On the component side, major companies aren’t commenting on the shortage and have even announced they won’t take questions on the matter at the start of press briefings.

Understandably, higher phone prices will likely lead people to hold off on upgrading, extending the time they keep their current handsets, said Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. The onus is on the brands to counteract this upgrade lethargy in two ways, he said: diversify revenue streams to lean harder on non-phone sales, like Apple is doing with its services, and second, add more bells and whistles to make price increases more palatable.

Hence, Samsung is increasing the Galaxy S26 storage alongside its price hike. And Samsung itself is better positioned to capture sales with its tradition of strong deals and incentives during a product launch. When the Galaxy S26 lineup launched, it also offered trade-in and promotional deals to offset the $100 price increase, including pairing other gadgets with its phones.

While the RAM shortage is the biggest factor driving these price increases, other factors are at play as well. Global instability, including the recent war in the Middle East, is forcing transportation to be rerouted outside no-fly zones, raising the price of transporting products. Components across the board are getting pricier, too.

The good news is that this price spike won’t last forever. Eventually, the race to build more AI data centers will slow, and in addition to more memory fabrication spinning up, the prices will stabilize. But like every other consumer good that saw a price spike, they likely won’t drop in affordability to where they were before.

«I don’t think the price of memory will go down to the same levels as last year,» Jeronimo said.

Technologies

Nintendo Dropped a Switch 2 Update With a New Mode You’ll Want to Turn On Immediately

This new feature is one of the best yet.

A new firmware update hit the Nintendo Switch 2 last week. Among the multitude of small changes is a new feature that will give Switch 1 games a notable upgrade.

Version 22.0.0 for the Switch 2 went live on March 16 and is available for download to the console. The big new feature in the update was Handheld Mode Boost, which will give Switch 1 games a visual upgrade when played on the Switch 2 in handheld mode.

[Nintendo Switch 2 System Update]
Version 22.0.0 adds «Handheld Mode Boost». This will make Switch 1 games think that they are in TV mode even when in handheld.
Games can run at higher resolutions in TV mode, taking better advantage of the Switch 2’s 1080p screen. pic.twitter.com/aXOKWosFAw

— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) March 17, 2026

What does Handheld Mode Boost do?

Even though the Switch 2 supports backward compatibility with almost all Switch 1 games, there was an issue. The Switch 2 has a higher resolution screen: 1080p versus the older hardware’s 720p. When playing a Switch 1 game on a Switch 2 in handheld mode, the graphics looked blurry and jagged.

When enabled, Handheld Mode Boost makes a Switch 1 game act as if it’s docked, so it displays 1080p at 60 frames per second. This will give the visuals an immediate upgrade.

How do you enable Handheld Mode Boost?

Handheld Mode Boost has to be turned on to see the effect, and it takes a few steps:

Select Systems Settings from the Home menu
Select System
Select Nintendo Switch Software Handling
Enable Handheld Mode Boost

Is there a downside to enabling Handheld Mode Boost?

A user on Reddit tested the mode to see how it affects the Switch 2’s battery life. The test used Doom Eternal for the Switch 1 with and without Handheld Mode Boost. The test showed that the battery life decreased from 5 hours, 5 minutes to 3 hours, 43 minutes. That’s a 27% drop and should be taken into account when using Handheld Mode Boost.

How do I upgrade my Nintendo Switch 2?

If you have Software Auto-Updates enabled on your Switch 2, a pop-up window should come up whenever you start a game. If not, head to System Settings and choose to update the console from the menu.

What other features were added in version 22.0.0?

Handheld Mode Boost was the main star of the new firmware update, but there were a slew of other changes.

Changed the on-screen text and animations when you load a virtual game card in the HOME Menu.

Added the ability to save notes about friends on your Friend List. The note content is not displayed to friends.

Added the ability to invite friends to GameChat rooms you’re participating in. Some friends may not be able to be invited, such as supervised accounts.

Friends who haven’t finished GameChat’s initial setup can now be invited to GameChat. Some friends may not be able to be invited, such as supervised accounts or those who haven’t used a Nintendo Switch 2.

Added the ability to rewind 10 seconds/advance 10 seconds with the ZL and ZR Buttons when watching a full-screen video in News or Nintendo eShop.

Added the option to add the following data to «Automatic Uploads» from Album.

Text-to-Speech, under Accessibility, can now read the text in Album and during first-time setup.

Added the ability to see the breakdown of storage capacity by data type for the system memory and microSD Express card.

Added the ability to perform an audio test when «Linear PCM 5.1 Surround» is selected for TV Sound in Audio.

When Airplane Mode is activated, the previously set preferences for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or NFC while in airplane mode will be saved and applied.

Added the ability to individually enable or disable Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or NFC during Airplane Mode from the Quick Settings.

Added the ability to see a notification in the Nintendo Switch Parental Controls smart device application when the Parental Controls PIN is input successfully on the console. This can also be set up to be a push notification to your smart device.

General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience.

Technologies

Switch 2 Pricing Shift: Nintendo Says Its Physical Games Will Cost $10 More

Gaming is about to become even more expensive.

Nintendo made an unprecedented move Wednesday by changing up its pricing scheme for its digital and physical Switch 2 games. Starting in May, it’s going to cost more to buy a physical game instead of a digital copy, and the current memory shortage could be the culprit.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, set to release on May 21, will be the first Nintendo Switch 2 game that will have two separate MSRPs, Nintendo said in a statement on Wednesday. The digital version will cost $60 while the physical copy will retail for $70 at Nintendo’s online store, and Switch 2 exclusive games that follow will have a similar pricing scheme to the digital format, costing less than the physical.

Nintendo did not give a reason as to why the prices will be different. It did say that its games «offer the same experiences whether in packaged or digital format, and this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they can buy and play Nintendo games.»

It’s unclear how retailers will respond to this change. Nintendo says retailers can set the prices as they see fit for either version.

Which Switch 2 game will have the new pricing scheme?

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book will be out on May 21.

What will be the price difference between physical and digital?

As of right now, physical copies will cost $10 more. It’s unclear whether this will be the same across the board for different games, but it will be the norm for Nintendo’s Switch 2 exclusive games.

Why did Nintendo make this change?

The most likely reason is that the storage for the games themselves was costing Nintendo too much money. In its statement, Nintendo says the change «reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format.» Nintendo already broke pricing norms for games with Mario Kart World and its retail price of $80, the highest price for a new game.

In the case of Switch 2 games, since the newer console is more powerful and can produce better visuals, that means the Switch cartridges require more storage. Switch 1 games ranged from 2GB to 32GB, while Switch 2 games can start as low as 4GB, but they have double the file size of the older Switch games, with Split Fiction taking up 73GB. Cartridges with large storage sizes are more expensive to produce, especially during the current global shortage of memory happening across the globe. It would that Nintendo wants to pass along those extra production costs to gamers as it did with Mario Kart World.

What will retailers do about the Switch 2 game price change?

Retailers were arguably the biggest reason publishers like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo didn’t price their digital versions of games lower than the physical copies. It’s been rumored that when the Big Three game companies began offering digital sales of games via their respective platforms, it was retailers who advised that if digital copies undercut physical versions, they would stop stocking those physical versions on store shelves. This rumor hasn’t been verified, but over the year, it does appear that there is an agreement to keep both versions of a game at the same price regardless of its physical or digital format.

The thing is, digital sales of games have been increasing over the years while physical sales have dropped tremendously. In January 2025, Matt Piscatella, senior director and video game industry advisor at Circana, posted on Blue Sky that sales of physical games media have dropped by more than 50% since 2021 and more than 85% since its peak in 2008. Part of that reason is how retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon also sell digital codes for a game, which gives consumers more outlets to purchase from.

As retail stores are allowing less space for physical media, it’s likely that they will not oppose this change by Nintendo. If there is one store that could feel the effects the most, it would be GameStop and other video games-focused retailers, but it’s not doom and gloom for them. While most of the gaming public will continue to purchase digital versions of games, especially when prices are lower, a growing number of game collectors have shown a willingness to pay a premium for physical copies. There’s also a push by some gamers to avoid digital media out of fear that publishers could turn off servers, making digital copies obsolete.

What will other game publishers do about the Switch 2 game price change?

Publishers of Switch 2 games, such as EA, Ubisoft and Bandai Namco will be the ones who have the toughest decision on this matter of pricing. Lowering the price of digital versions of their games is an immediate revenue hit for them, especially since many of the games they publish and develop have large budgets surpassing those of many Nintendo games. If they don’t change the pricing for games across the board, these publishers might make changes to their midrange titles, where it would be an easier pill to swallow.

It’s also unlikely that Sony and Microsoft will follow suit, as both have been adjusting their plans to deal with the current downward trend in gaming.

Technologies

Fitbit’s Kid-Friendly Smartwatch Gets a Sizable Amazon Spring Sale Discount

The now-$100 cellular connected smartwatch provides many phonelike benefits without handing over a full-fledged iPhone or Android.

Google’s Fitbit Ace LTE is a cellular-connected smartwatch meant for kids, and with a discount from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, the watch could be a lower-cost way for calling or texting your child without handing over a full-fledged phone.

The Fitbit Ace LTE is normally $180 but is discounted down to $100 during Amazon’s shopping event. That’s back down to the all-time low price we saw during Black Friday. CNET’s Scott Stein reviewed the watch when it was first released in 2024, noting that his 11-year-old son used it constantly for playing games and making phone calls.

The Ace gives parents a lot of control over who can call or text your child with the watch, for better and for worse. The watch does have a required cellular plan in order to work — at a cost of $10 a month, or $120 annually — and was updated to allow for siblings to call each other if they both have the watch. However, most communication controls are handled on Fitbit’s Ace app, and primarily allow a parent to call or text their child using the watch.

The Ace LTE does have its own health-related features as well, but doesn’t have access to app marketplaces in the way that the Apple Watch does or watches that run on Google’s Wear OS. This could be a selling point, or it could be limiting, depending on how much digital freedom is appropriate for your child.

Why this deal matters

If your kid isn’t ready to graduate to a phone yet, the Fitbit Ace LTE is a good stepping stone with decent parental controls. This is back down to the lowest price we’ve seen on this smartwatch, so if you’re looking for a convenient communications device for your child, this is a great opportunity.