Samsung is reportedly having a hard time coming up with a price for the Galaxy S26 likely to ship in early 2026. And that could be a potentially ominous sign for anyone planning on buying Samsung's latest flagship phones.
Word of Samsung's Galaxy S26 pricing dilemma comes from a report in The Bell, a Korean publication, which claims the phone maker is struggling to figure out how much to charge for its upcoming devices. There's a lot of factors at play here, but one of the leading culprits appears to be rising component costs, particularly for memory.
How RAM costs impact Samsung
Samsung may already be feeling the pinch of higher RAM costs. The Galaxy Z TriFold costs around 3.5 million won in South Korea, which is less than what it costs Samsung to make the foldable. In other words, Samsung is selling that device at a loss, at least in its home market, to prove the viability of the triple-folding phone. (The Galaxy Z TriFold doesn't arrive in the U.S. until the first quarter of 2026, so we don't yet know how much the phone will cost here.)
The Galaxy S series poses a trickier problem for Samsung, as those flagship phones drive a lot of the electronic giant's revenue for its mobile business. Samsung is not going to want to sell phones as popular as its Galaxy S handsets at a loss, which could mean a price hike over last year's models.
The Galaxy S25 started at $799, while the Plus and Ultra versions of the S25 series cost $999 and $1,299, respectively. The Ultra is already one of the most expensive phones of the non-folding variety, costing $100 more than its chief rival, the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
What to expect from the Galaxy S26
Complicating matters further is that Galaxy S26 rumors aren't painting a picture of extensive improvements to Samsung's flagships, at least when it comes to hardware. The phones are expected to full adopt Qi2 wireless charging, and there's talk of a new camera sensor for improving low-light photos. Those will be welcome changes, but they're not the sort that get people excited about paying more for their phone.
The struggle over cost might also explain Samsung's thinking behind what chipset to use in the Galaxy S26 series. Normally, you'd expect the phones to be powere by the latest system on chip from Samsung — the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, in this instance. But we've heard multiple reports that some Galaxy S26 models will turn instead to Samsung's own Exynos 2600 as a way to save costs.
Samsung pulled off a similar strategy this summer, using Snapdragon silicon in its Galaxy Z Fold 7 foldable while the less expensive Galaxy Z Flip 7 featured an Exynos 2500 chip.
According to The Bell, Samsung may have bought itself more time by reshuffling the expected lineup for the Galaxy S26. Originally, a new version of the Galaxy S25 Edge was expected to replace the Plus model in the lineup, but Samsung has opted for a Galaxy S26 Plus instead. That change sounds like it's going to push back the release of the new phones from January, with The Bell being the latest to cite a February release date.
Pricing rumors tend to pick up the closer we get to a phone's release, so expect more clarity about what Samsung plans to charge for the Galaxy S26 models to happen early in the new year.
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