The year 2025 was pretty wholesome, if you ask my tech-obsessed heart. It produced some terrific divides, such as the liquid-cooled Red Magic 11 Pro that also redefined what it means to get the best hardware possible for your money. The iPhone 17 emerged as the sleeper hit, while the iPhone 17 Pro saw Apple back to its swashbuckling ways.
It gave us phones such as the Vivo X300, which truly redefined what a palm-friendly phone can accomplish. Samsung, not one to sit on the bench, wowed us with the Galaxy Z TriFold that truly embraced the hybrid phone-tablet vision. Then there’s Google, which truly attained its destined form with the fantastic Pixel 10 series.
The likes of OnePlus and Honor pushed the boundaries of battery tech, while names such as Oppo and Vivo showcased what camera excellence truly looks like. But not everything was great. Smartphone users grew wary of AI being shoved relentlessly, and towards the closing end of the year, we got a memory crisis.
A pricing shock is almost inevitable
It all started with AI, or to put it more accurately, hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into data centers that prop tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. The result? A steep memory shortage. Loaded with cash, AI giants paid a higher price and hogged the supply of memory chips.
The inventory ran short, and skyrocketed the price of RAM modules to such an extent that DDR5 now sounds like a luxury. It was only a matter of time before manufacturers — already making record profits — shifted their full attention to AI clients and spooked everyone else, including smartphone brands.
Reports say the prices of smartphone memory have gone up by as much as 50%, and it’s only going up in the coming months. That, coupled with the rising price of silicon, is almost a sure sign that a price hike is coming next year. The likes of Apple, with its supply chain mastery, can absorb it to an extent, but the rest will simply have to pass the added costs on to customers.
Insiders say multiple smartphone brands are already struggling to avoid a price hike starting next year, but the winds have already started to show their effect in markets such as India, where even a memory-maker like Samsung has raised prices. Owing to the rising price of DRAM and NAND, smartphone makers are in deep trouble, one where the only other escape route is cutting down on the RAM capacity itself.
But the latter approach is not a favorable one. Everyone is pushing for more AI on phones, but AI needs a generous serving of memory. In a nutshell, you either pay up from your wallet, or cut down on the memory allowance. And neither seems like a good idea.
More AI, fewer apps
AI is the most controversial smartphone trend that has emerged in the past couple of years. Every smartphone brand apparently sees it as an existential upgrade, irrespective of whether users are actually using it as much as the feverish marketing will have you believe. But it’s hear to stay, regardless.
In 2026, the flavor of AI will be different and more far-reaching than ever. To begin, more and more AI-powered experiences will run on-device. That means for tasks that require an AI model to do its magic, the whole process will run logically, without requiring an internet connection or any personal data, leaving your phone.
More importantly, AI will dig deeper within apps. Google and Apple have already released frameworks that will allow them to integrate Gemini or Apple Intelligence within their apps. On the Pixel phones, you can already handle a wide range of app-specific tasks using natural language prompts, even in third-party apps such as WhatsApp and Spotify – without ever opening those apps.
But will developers adopt it? That remains to be seen. But even if they don’t, there’s another way AI will integrate within your apps. OpenAI just launched its own ChatGPT App Store, which lets you perform tasks in dozens of apps with text or voice commands. From creating playlists in Apple Music to editing photos in Photoshop, it can handle it all. All you need to do is link the accounts once, and you’re ready to roll.
Nothing has built an even more personalized system to ditch apps. The AI-powered Nothing Playground app lets you create mini-apps by simply describing their purpose and design in plain language. You can share these mini-apps and even build atop existing ones.
Google’s Opal is also doing something similar, and it’s only a matter of time before the concept becomes mainstream. The vision, however, is pretty clear. Apps are here to stay, but AI assistants will increasingly handle the day-to-day tasks in a conversational manner, instead of taps and types within these apps.
But here’s the fine line. If AI takes the stage, it will require more RAM. And that would mean you’re not only paying for the hardware juice, but also the subscriptions that tag along to give you the full experience. It’s a bittersweet bargain that not many users ever asked for in the fitst place.
Big battery, more power
When 2025 arrived, a phone with a 5,000 mAh battery was considered a powerhouse in terms of per-charge mileage. By the time 2025 came to an end, Honor had already launched a normal-looking phone with a 10,000 mAh battery. This was not a one-off device.
The OnePlus 15 crammed a 7,300 mAh battery with 120W charging support in tow. Fellow Chinese brands quickly followed in the footsteps, and within a few months, a 7,000mAh battery became the norm for premium phones.
Heading into 2025, we are already hearing murmurs of phones with 8,000mAh batteries coming aplenty. The likes of Realme are planning to go beyond the 10,000 mAh limit early next year, thanks to advanced technologies such as silicon-carbon substrates.
All this is happening with a simultaneous jump in the charging credentials. Mainstream phones such as the OnePlus 15 are already at 120W wired charging, joined by a healthy few competitors that are also in the 40W wireless top-up bracket.
The pressure is mounting, and if the delayed adoption of the Qi2 standard in 2025 is anything to go by, we are going to see phones that not only speed up the charging pace, but also boost the battery capacity. The ball is now in the court of heavy-hitters such as Samsung, Apple, and Google.
The camera wars are back
Google’s Pixels and Apple’s iPhones finally embraced the mantra of all-big-sensors in 2025. Samsung, on the other hand, touched the 200-megapixel goalpost, but didn’t quite level up elsewhere. But it’s the smaller labels from the East that mounted the pressure.
Xiaomi’s latest Leica-tuned phone pairs a massive 1-inch primary camera with a 200-megapixel zoom sensor. Oppo and Vivo played a similar game with their respective telephoto snappers, while also throwing extender kits into the mix.
Next year, the race heats up. The Vivo X300 Ultra and Oppo Find X9 Ultra could feature not one, but two cameras with a 200-megapixel resolution. Oppo is reportedly reimaging the lens engineering to achieve an unprecedented 10x optical zoom range, doubling the output from the iPhone 17 Pro or the Google Pixel 10 Pro.
Apple won’t exactly be sitting idle. Reports claim the company will embrace variable aperture tech on the iPhone 18 Pro, a camera innovation that Samsung implemented on the Galaxy S phones years ago, but abandoned quickly. Talking about Samsung, it seems the company will lean into pro-grade controls and deliver software-backed upgrades.
The theme is clear. The race to the imaging summit will be stiff next year. It would be interesting to see whether it’s hardware upgrades that make a bigger difference, or if algorithmic tuning will deliver a more refined experience. Either way, I’m excited.
