Korean publication FN News has some good news and some bad news for people wanting to buy the Galaxy S26 when it comes out (likely in March) – prices are going up, but launch day deals may allow you to dodge the price hike.
According to industry sources, the prices of the base 256GB models will increase between KRW 44,000 and KRW 88,000 in South Korea. For reference, the Galaxy S25 launched at KRW 1,155,000, the S25+ at KRW 1,353,000 and the S25 Ultra at KRW 1,698,400.
That’s for Korea – Samsung will reportedly keep the launch prices the same for select overseas markets like the US. That means that the S26 trio will launch at $800, $1,000 and $1,300, respectively, the same as the S25 trio.
It sounds like the lower prices will be a temporary measure during the initial launch period. And it’s not clear exactly which markets will even get those lower prices at all.
Forecast prices for mobile DRAM (source: TrendForce)
The cause is pretty easy to track down – the cost of 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM has more than doubled since last year. And it is expected to grow by an additional 40% by the second half of this year. The prices of NAND flash (storage) are going up too.
It’s not just memory, though. The Korean Won to US Dollar exchange rate is unfavorable, reaching above 1,400 KRW to $1. This is a major issue for components that have to be sourced from abroad.
Samsung reportedly spent a record KRW 11 trillion on smartphone chipsets in Q3 and Q4 last year – that’s $7.6 billion, most of which went to US-based Qualcomm.
Now you see why Samsung is pushing so hard to replace Snapdragon with Exynos chips – Korean-made chips are cheaper and not susceptible to fluctuations in the exchange rate. However, it hasn’t been particularly successful and only a few models use Exynos. As for the Galaxy S26 series, the latest unconfirmed information is that it will use Snapdragon everywhere except for one market – Korea.
Samsung is expected to unveil the Galaxy S26 series in late February in San Francisco ahead of the retail launch in early March. Here are some rumored specs for the new phones.
P.S. the S-series flagships are not the only models affected by this. Even existing models are getting marked up, e.g. the Galaxy A56 will see a ₹2,000 price bump in India.
Source (in Korean)