Here Are The Big Changes Coming to Budget Phones This Year
By Sayed Abdullah | June 14, 2026
If you have been saving up to buy a new budget smartphone this year, yaar, there is a twist coming that nobody in the marketing department is going to advertise loudly. For the last few years, even cheap phones kept getting better — more RAM, more storage, better screens. The trend was reliable: every twelve months, you got a little more for a little less. That trend is now reversing. Rising memory chip prices are forcing manufacturers to make a choice that will annoy a lot of buyers: instead of upgrading their entry-level phones, they are downgrading them. The hardware you thought had disappeared — 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, waterdrop notches — is about to come roaring back. And the reason is as cold as it is simple: chips are too expensive.
The era of the budget phone that felt like a flagship is pausing. Hardly welcome news for Pakistani wallets.
What Is Actually Going On
A well-known industry insider recently posted that several sub-brands of major smartphone makers are readying new models in the sub-1,000 yuan segment — roughly $140, or about Rs. 40,000. At that price, you would normally expect some compromises. But the surprises this time are the nature of those compromises. The report claims that upcoming budget phones will stick with 1080p LCD panels and, incredibly, bring back the waterdrop notch — that teardrop-shaped cutout at the top of the screen that many thought had been permanently replaced by punch-hole cameras. Entry-level memory configurations are also reportedly moving back to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Just months ago, many affordable smartphones were launching with 8GB of RAM and 256GB as standard. The trend line has bent downwards, and the reason is not a design choice. It is the cost of memory chips.
Samsung has never fully abandoned the waterdrop notch in its Galaxy A0X series — the Galaxy A07 5G still wears one — so the look is not entirely new. But seeing it return across multiple brands suggests that this is not a creative decision. It is a cost-cutting measure dressed up as a design refresh. LCD panels, too, are cheaper than AMOLED, and while they are perfectly usable in bright sunlight, they do not offer the deeper blacks and power efficiency that many budget buyers had started to expect. The downgrades are not catastrophic. But they are real, and they are happening because the companies that make memory chips — DRAM, NAND, the building blocks of your phone's speed and storage — have been hiking prices at a rate that has not been seen in years.
Market research firm TrendForce reported that global DRAM contract prices rose by more than 40% for two consecutive quarters, from late 2025 through early 2026. Counterpoint put the numbers even higher, saying memory prices increased by 80% to 90% quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 alone, with DRAM, NAND, and high-bandwidth memory all hitting record highs. When the price of the components that go into every phone jumps by nearly double in a few months, the maths of building a Rs. 40,000 device stops adding up. Something has to give. And what is giving is the hardware that consumers actually notice.
The Background You Need
The memory chip market is cyclical, and the current upswing has been unusually brutal. Xiaomi founder Lei Jun called the surge in memory prices "extremely aggressive" and predicted that prices could continue rising over the next two years. He also suggested that users planning to upgrade their phones may want to do so sooner rather than later — a rare piece of advice from a company executive who normally would be encouraging you to wait for the next model. When the boss of one of the world's largest phone makers tells you to buy now because things are about to get more expensive, it is worth listening.
The impact extends beyond budget phones. A separate report from late last year warned that even flagship devices could see memory downgrades, with 16GB of RAM becoming rare in top-tier phones by 2026 and 4GB becoming more common in budget models. That prediction is now materialising. The same forces that are pushing budget phones back to 6GB of RAM are also making high-capacity variants more expensive across the board. Buyers who want 256GB of storage or 12GB of RAM will pay a premium that did not exist a year ago. The days of abundant memory at every price point are, for now, over.
How This Affects You in Pakistan
In Pakistan, the budget smartphone segment is not a luxury — it is where most of the market lives. A phone priced at Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 60,000 is a considered purchase for a student, a delivery rider, a small shopkeeper. When that phone ships with 6GB of RAM instead of 8GB, apps reload more often. When storage drops from 256GB to 128GB, you start deleting photos and uninstalling apps sooner. These are not abstract downgrades. They are daily frustrations that accumulate over the two or three years that most Pakistanis expect a phone to last. A waterdrop notch may seem like a cosmetic issue, but it is also a signal: the phone you are buying is using components that were considered outdated a year ago, and you are paying the same price — or more — for the privilege.
I was at a mobile market in Saddar a few weeks ago, yaar, watching a young man count out notes to buy a phone for his sister. He had saved for months. The shopkeeper was showing him a model with 8GB of RAM and a punch-hole display, and the price had just gone up by Rs. 3,000 because of the dollar fluctuation. The man looked at the phone, looked at the cash in his hand, and then quietly asked if there was an older model with similar specs. He was already being priced out of the new market. If memory prices stay where they are, that scene is going to become more common. And if Lei Jun is right — if prices keep rising for two more years — the budget phone market in Pakistan could start to look less like a ladder upward and more like a treadmill. You keep walking, but the ground keeps moving backward.
For buyers who need a phone right now, Lei Jun's advice — upgrade before prices rise further — has genuine weight. The PTA registration tax already adds Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 30,000 to the cost of imported phones, and combined with the new hardware downgrades, the effective value per rupee is shrinking from both ends. A phone that cost Rs. 50,000 with 8GB of RAM last year may cost Rs. 55,000 with 6GB this year, and the PTA tax will still apply. The math is unforgiving. If you can hold onto your current phone for another year, do it. If you must buy, expect less for your money, and check the RAM and storage figures carefully — the marketing material will try to distract you with camera megapixels and battery capacity, but the memory numbers are where the real cuts are being made.
What Happens Next
The memory chip cycle will eventually turn. New fabrication plants are being built, and supply will eventually catch up with demand. But the timeline for that is measured in years, not months. In the meantime, budget phone buyers will face a market that is quietly rolling back features, and the companies doing the rolling back will hope that nobody notices. Some buyers will. They are the ones who will ask why the new model has less storage than the old one, why the screen looks a little different, why the notch is back. The salespeople will have answers prepared. None of those answers will include the phrase "memory prices rose 90 percent in one quarter." But that, more than any design philosophy, is what is shaping the phones on the shelves. The budget phone market is entering a period of compromise. The only question is how long it will last, and whether the buyers who depend on these devices will be able to absorb the cost.
Have you noticed the hardware downgrades in new budget phones, and are you planning to upgrade this year or wait it out? Share your experience in the comments.
Sayed Abdullah is the founder and editor of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he writes about technology and how it impacts the everyday lives of Pakistani consumers. Read more.
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Sources
- TrendForce — DRAM contract price data for Q4 2025 to Q1 2026.
- Counterpoint — Quarterly memory market price increase figures.
- Lei Jun (Xiaomi founder) — Public warning on aggressive memory price surge.
- Industry insider post — Leaked specifications of upcoming sub-1,000 yuan phones.
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