Samsung’s AI Ambitions May Bring 16GB RAM to Entire Galaxy S26 Range

Samsung might be preparing to give its upcoming Galaxy S26 series a major performance boost by upgrading all models to 16GB of RAM. If accurate, this would mark a significant leap from the Galaxy S25 lineup, which tops out at 12GB of RAM. This upgrade will position Samsung’s 2026 flagships as AI-ready powerhouses.

All Galaxy S26 models might get 16GB of RAM as standard

Barring for one or two markets (China and South Korea) where Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 Ultra in a 16GB RAM variant, the 2025 flagship lineup is only available with 12GB of RAM worldwide. It is the first Samsung flagship with 16GB RAM since the Galaxy S20 Ultra and S21 Ultra. The Korean firm didn’t launch any phones with 16GB RAM in 2022, 2023, or 2024.

However, according to a forecast from Macquarie Research (via tipster Jukanlosreve), things could change next year. Not just the Ultra model, but the entire Galaxy S26 lineup could get a RAM upgrade to 16GB. Or at the very least, the Galaxy S16 Ultra’s 16GB RAM variant may be available widely.

This prediction aligns with the Korean firm’s growing focus on on-device AI, which benefits heavily from larger memory allocations for real-time processing, multitasking, and seamless generative AI performance. With Samsung expanding on-device AI features and enhancing the role of NPUs, RAM has become more critical than ever. 16GB of memory would give Galaxy S26 models the headroom to run AI tasks without slowing down.

Interestingly, while Samsung may push to 16GB RAM in 2026, Apple is expected to cap the iPhone 18 at 12GB. It is expected to reach 12GB in 2025 with the iPhone 17 lineup, up from 8GB in the iPhone 16. But despite Apple’s RAM optimization through tight hardware-software integration, it could soon fall behind in terms of raw memory capacity, especially as AI demands grow.