It’s no secret that smartphones are already ridiculously expensive, and the ongoing RAM shortage is one reason prices have climbed so much. While experts expect the shortage to ease over the next two to three years, don’t expect smartphone prices to fall accordingly. The cost of owning a smartphone is only going to increase, and that’s the plan.

The operating systems are getting bulkier

Those pretty animations come at a cost

Operating systems used to be something that was just there—a layer underneath your apps that quietly did its job. Apparently that’s too bland for modern sensibilities. Now every OS needs personality. I’m talking about glass effects, elaborate 3D animations, and icons that remember their position in space so they can animate naturally when you minimize or close an app.

All of that polish certainly makes an OS feel more modern, but it also demands more CPU power and RAM. Better optimization can offset some of that overhead, but the same optimization applied to a leaner operating system would leave far more resources available for the apps you’re actually using. However, we just seem to be accepting bulkier operating systems that consume a meaningful share of the hardware just to power visual flourishes.

I’ve noticed this firsthand after comparing my M1 iPad Air with my partner’s M2 iPad Air following the iPadOS 26 update. The M1 model has become noticeably less responsive, while the M2 remains almost as smooth as it was before. My best guess is that the M2 has enough performance headroom to absorb the additional demands of Liquid Glass, whereas the M1 is much closer to its limits. If this were purely an optimization issue, I’d expect both devices to have slowed down by a similar amount.

That’s concerning because we’re talking about desktop-class chips. Running a tablet operating system shouldn’t push hardware like this to its limits, yet that’s exactly what it feels like.

I’ve also noticed something similar with my Pixel 10 running Android 17 and my Pixel 6a running LineageOS. Despite the Pixel 10’s processor being four generations newer, the two phones feel surprisingly similar in day-to-day use. That suggests Google’s increasingly feature-heavy version of Android 17 with all the AI shenanigans demands considerably more resources than LineageOS, which stays much closer to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

AI is becoming a mainstay

First no headphone jack—and now forced AI

Operating systems aren’t just getting heavier because of flashy animations and pizzazz—they’re also getting heavier because of AI. That’s simply where the industry is headed, and whether we like it or not, we’ll likely end up paying for features many of us never asked for.

Google recently showcased its AI-first vision for Android 17, describing Android less as an operating system and more as an “intelligence system” designed to manage and orchestrate agentic AI experiences. Apple has demonstrated a similar direction for iOS 27, with many of its AI features expected to rely on Google’s Gemini models.

If that becomes the industry’s default approach, I think app developers will gradually shift their attention toward building robust APIs for AI agents to interact with. The human-facing interface—the menu system and the design layouts—could become a lower priority. In some ways, that makes sense. Designing software for people is usually less about coding and more about psychology and has always been a hard problem to crack—whereas exposing well-documented APIs for AI is primarily a logic problem, which most developers generally better at.

Now, suppose we end up in that AI-first world, you’d naturally want those AI models to run locally to preserve your privacy. The problem is that local AI has a relatively high hardware floor, often requiring around 12GB of RAM and a flagship-class processor for a good experience. Even if RAM prices eventually stabilize, capable on-device AI could remain largely limited to flagship and upper mid-range phones, effectively turning privacy into a premium feature.

Budget and lower mid-range phones will still exist, of course, but they may rely much more heavily on cloud-based AI. That raises two concerns. First, cloud processing inherently involves sending more of your data to remote servers. Second, running large AI models is expensive, meaning you’d only be able to access them after paying a subscription. You could eventually find yourself paying a monthly fee just to have an AI agent order a pizza, book an Uber, or complete other everyday tasks on your behalf.

Admittedly, this is speculative. But I think we’re already seeing the early signs. Most of us can think of apps or websites with interfaces so frustrating that we’d happily let an AI navigate them instead. If that becomes the expectation rather than the exception, developers may have even less incentive to optimize those experiences for humans.

Everyone’s trying to build a walled garden

Compatibility is the feature they’d rather not sell

Credit: 
Lucas Gouveia / How-To Geek

This isn’t specifically about the price of a smartphone—it’s about the cost of owning one. You may have noticed that most smartphone makers are following the path Apple paved years ago. They’re no longer just selling you a phone; they’re selling you an entire ecosystem.

Take my own setup. I own a Pixel 10 because I prefer the Pixel experience over Samsung’s One UI. At the same time, I think the Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Buds are better accessories than Google’s alternatives. The catch is that many of their best features are locked behind a Galaxy phone.

As a result, I’ve actually considered buying a Samsung Galaxy—an affordable A-series—just to unlock the accessories I want, rationalizing that it would make sense as a secondary device. It’s either that or settling for the Pixel accessories that I don’t like as much. The fact that Samsung has me seriously considering buying a phone I never intended to own is exactly the problem. It’s wasteful, it’s anti-consumer, and right now it’s often the only way to build the setup you actually want.

The ironic part is that Apple and Google are gradually making it easier to move between their ecosystems through initiatives like simpler device switching and cross-platform AirDrop support. Meanwhile, within Android itself, the experience is becoming increasingly fragmented depending on whose logo is on your hardware. I keep hoping the European Union eventually steps in, but you also have to wonder why it hasn’t already. Perhaps these ecosystems are just compatible enough to avoid regulatory scrutiny while remaining just restrictive enough to nudge people into committing to a single brand.

This is just one man’s educated guess

I want to be upfront that none of this is confirmed. No manufacturer has come out and said, “We’re bloating the OS to age out your hardware,” or, “We’re locking accessory features behind our ecosystem.” And, of course, nobody has published a roadmap for AI subscriptions on budget phones.

That said, I’ve spent the better part of a decade watching this industry. I’ve seen software grow heavier as hardware improvements become more incremental, some gimmick (read: AI) becoming the next major hardware differentiator, and ecosystems become increasingly closed. Individually, each trend has a perfectly reasonable explanation. Together, though, they all seem to point toward the same outcome: consumers paying more.

I’d genuinely love to be wrong. But my gut says I’m not.