Comprehensive Mobile Phone Specs Cuts: Users Suffer from Widespread Hardware Downgrades

Mobile phone consumption is quietly downgrading.

The global smartphone market in 2026 is going through a severe winter. According to data released by IDC, global smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2026 plummeted 20% year on year, hitting the lowest level since 2013, while shipments in the Chinese market also saw a sharp decline of 15.2%. The most intuitive feeling for ordinary consumers is that mobile phones have become more expensive.

The core reason for the widespread price increase of mobile phones is the runaway storage cost. With the continuous growth of computing power demand for global AI infrastructure, storage giants have tilted their production capacity to higher-profit businesses such as HBM, which directly leads to a sharp drop in supply and skyrocketing prices of RAM and flash memory for smartphones.

In the second half of 2026, the proportion of storage material cost in the total cost of flagship models is getting higher and higher. Calculated by TrendForce, storage cost accounted for 34% of the total cost of iPhone 18 Pro in the third quarter of this year, and this proportion will rise to 42% in the first half of next year.

Under huge cost pressure, mobile phone manufacturers, in order to maintain the basic pricing range of product lines and secure necessary profit margins, have gradually started to cut corners on hardware parameters that are hardly perceptible to consumers, making hidden shrinkage and configuration downgrade an unspoken unwritten rule.

Not Just Storage! All-round Downgrade of Mobile Phone Configurations

Looking back at the development history of smartphones over the past decade, the evolution direction of mobile phones has always been continuous performance improvement and increased configurations without price hikes. However, as of 2026, the market situation has changed. At a time when smartphones are generally getting more expensive, models at different price points are all "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" in various forms, leading to degraded configurations. Some degradations are obvious at a glance, while others are well hidden but will still affect the user experience.

1. Storage: Apart from capacity, the particles, speed and lifespan are all compromised.

First of all, the reduction of capacity is very real. A few years ago, there was a wave of popularization of large storage in the mobile phone market, and mid-range phones were no shortage of affordable 16+1TB versions. Some flagship models even directly cancelled the 256GB version, starting from 512GB, and 12GB RAM became the baseline. But now the situation has changed: 8GB RAM has made a comeback, a large number of mid-range phones and the entry-level variants of some flagship models start with 8GB RAM; even for flagship models, the base version usually only has 256GB capacity.

Secondly, in invisible aspects, storage parameters have also shrunk. Take the iPhone 18 Pro series as an example, for the 1TB and 2TB large-capacity versions, the memory particles are switched from TLC to QLC. Compared with TLC, QLC has more stacked layers and lower cost for the same capacity, but at the cost of much shorter lifespan.

(Source: Kingston)

At the same time, the speed of QLC is also slower. After the cache of the mobile phone flash memory is exhausted, the read and write speed will drop sharply. According to the test of HOMOLAB, when the flash memory usage of the iPhone 18 Pro Max 1TB version exceeds 60%, the average write speed will drop to 45MB/s.

However, the good news at present is that the models that use QLC flash memory on a large scale are temporarily limited to the large-capacity version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max. No such cases have been reported in the Android camp so far, and the vast majority of models still use TLC flash memory. But if the storage supply becomes further tight in the future, more brands of mobile phones may have to adopt QLC.

2. Screen: Resolution and high refresh rate remain unchanged, but the luminescent materials are a blind box draw.

Mobile phone screens have been continuously evolving in recent years. After domestic OLED technology entered the mature stage, the cost of OLED screens has been declining. However, the rise in storage costs has led some manufacturers to try to cut costs from the screen. There are many parameters on the screen, and core indicators such as resolution, refresh rate and brightness are familiar and more perceptible to ordinary consumers. Even if manufacturers choose low-cost screens, they will not tamper with these aspects.

But in fact, there are many other factors affecting the actual screen experience, such as the critical luminescent material. The OLED screen substrate plays a decisive role in screen quality, and basically locks its power consumption, color, lifespan and other indicators. In the past, mobile phone manufacturers liked to take the new generation of luminescent materials as one of the core selling points of mobile phone screens.

(Source: Samsung)

According to related leaks, the standard version of iPhone 18, which was delayed to be released at the beginning of next year, will have its screen downgraded, with the luminescent material downgraded from M14 to M12, falling back to the level of the iPhone 14 Pro released in 2022. At the same time, there are reports that Samsung's low-end mobile phones will purchase screens from third-party suppliers in the future, and the luminescent materials and overall screen quality may be degraded.

Compared with other screen parameters, the downgrade of luminescent materials is more hidden. As long as manufacturers do not mark it, it is difficult for users to identify.

3. Chip: Old chips are revived, new chips are rebranded.

In the recent new phone launch wave, Lei Technology (ID: leitech) noticed a phenomenon that some new flagship models have an entry-level variant in the same product line. Although these models are named after the flagship series, they actually use old-generation chips. The reason why manufacturers do this is simple: to reduce costs in this way, while creating the illusion that the starting price of the new flagship is still relatively low.

For example, the entry-level variant of the flagship model released by a domestic brand some time ago does not use the Dimensity 9600 series, but the previous generation Dimensity 9500 series. The performance of the old chip is certainly not weak, but there is still a gap compared with the latest flagship processor. Through this method, the starting price of this flagship series is controlled below 5000 yuan.

Recently, a model named REDMI M100 Pro was launched on the Mi Mall. It only has one 12+256GB storage version, priced at 2499 yuan, but judging from its appearance and configuration, it should be the same model as the Redmi Note 14 Pro released in 2024.

(Source: Xiaomi)

At that time, the first-sale price of Redmi Note 14 Pro 12+256GB was about 1699 yuan. This revived REDMI model is likely to be an inventory product, and it is equipped with the Dimensity 7300-Ultra chip, which is also a mid-range chip released in 2024.

In addition, some chips look like new processors by their names, but their core architecture and specifications are still similar to those of old chips. These rebranded chips essentially use new names to create information gaps, and mostly appear on mid-to-low end chips.

With Major Downgrades of Mobile Phone Hardware, How Can Users Choose Products to Avoid Pitfalls?

When price hikes and configuration shrinkage have become the norm in the current smartphone market, the era when consumers can buy new phones without careful consideration is over. As ordinary consumers, if we want to avoid falling into traps in this environment of asymmetric information, we need to sort out a new set of selection methods. For this pitfall avoidance guide, we can summarize it into the following points.

First of all, we need to ignore the marketing selling points and focus on more core parameters.

No matter it is the product introduction page on the official brand website or the detail page on the e-commerce platform, the product selling points marked in large font are often what manufacturers most want to promote, and they may be attached with more attractive marketing terms. In contrast, the small-print notes and the plain parameter sheet deserve more attention. Although manufacturers may not list all configuration information, we can still obtain some valid information through some basic parameters, such as the specifications of RAM and flash memory, the aperture, focal length, pixel and other configurations of the camera.

At the same time, we can also obtain more detailed information through channels such as user-shared experiences and teardowns on forums and social platforms. Whether it is the results of their benchmark tests or their subjective analysis of feelings, they provide us with more information to understand the corresponding products.

Secondly, we can consider purchasing old models, especially old flagship models.

After all, the reason why manufacturers play tricks and make downgrades on new phones is largely out of helplessness. After all, the prices of core components such as storage have risen, and the profit margin of mobile phones itself is not large. New phones either raise prices or have to take the path of configuration degradation.

Since the newly launched mid-range phones and standard flagship versions have made various hidden cuts to maintain profits, under the same or even lower budget, directly buying old flagship phones may be a more cost-effective approach.

(Source: OPPO)

For example, the price of a flagship released last year has usually dropped significantly one year after its launch. They did not face such extreme storage cost pressure in 2026 at the beginning of design, so many of them retain high-quality screens, full-version SoCs, high-speed storage and other configurations. In terms of overall configuration and user experience, a discounted old flagship is likely to perform better than new mid-range phones or entry-level flagship phones.

Of course, when buying old flagships, you still need to choose reliable platforms. Some old flagships have been removed from official channels, and the remaining inventory usually circulates on e-commerce platforms. At this time, we'd better choose relatively reliable channels such as self-operated stores and "10 billion subsidy" programs.

Final Notes

All in all, this 2026 mobile phone industry winter triggered by soaring storage costs not only makes mobile phone manufacturers struggle repeatedly between pricing and profits, but also greatly reduces the purchase experience of ordinary consumers.

Hidden downgrades, old chips in new packages, and core component shrinkage will most likely accompany us for quite a long time. Before the storage production capacity returns to normal, this phenomenon of hidden cuts in product configurations is difficult to disappear completely.

Since the general environment is like this, what we as ordinary consumers can do is to avoid pitfalls as much as possible. The old purchase strategy of "buy new instead of old" is no longer fully applicable in today's somewhat surreal mobile phone market. Relatively speaking, old flagship phones with less cost pressure may offer better daily use experience than those new phones that are pieced together to maintain the price line.

In addition, for users who do not pursue the latest technologies and product features, another more rational choice is to hold their wallets, get rid of the obsession with getting the latest release, and postpone the phone upgrade for the time being. After all, at a time when everything in the consumer electronics industry is getting more expensive, we really do not have a perfect solution.

This article is from "Lei Technology", authorized for release by 36Kr.