Galaxy S24 Series May Be In For A Big RAM Upgrade
The Samsung Galaxy S24 is several months away from an official reveal, but leaks about the flagship smartphone series have already started to seep through. Last week, we learned about Samsung's tentative plans to massively upgrade the camera hardware over the Galaxy S23 Ultra. A newly spotted rumor now hints the Galaxy S24 is set to get significant upgrades in RAM, improving the performance and multi-tasking abilities of the phone.
Tipster Revengus, who has previously leaked other details about the cameras and processor on the Galaxy S24 series, now has information to share about the upgraded RAM on all models. As per the tipster, the Galaxy S24 Ultra will rock up to 16GB of RAM, a significant upgrade over the current 12GB memory on the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Meanwhile, the standard Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24 Plus models are also set for sizeable upgrades and will come with 12GB of RAM, up from 8GB on the Galaxy S23 and S23+ announced in February 2023.
What about faster RAM?
The rumored RAM upgrade on the Galaxy S24 series will crank up the performance over the Galaxy S23 series, which itself received a RAM upgrade from the previous Galaxy S22 series. While the overhaul from Galaxy S22 to Galaxy S23 was not in terms of the RAM size on different models, Samsung upgraded to a faster and more power-efficient memory standard.
The Galaxy S23 is the first Samsung flagship series with an LPDDR5X RAM chip. Theoretically, the LPDDR5X module increases the speed of the RAM to 8,533Gbps (Gigabits per second), bumping it by 33% compared to the older LPDDR5 technology.
Incidentally, a Samsung competitor has already introduced a faster RAM technology for mobile devices. Korean electronics manufacturer SK hynix introduced LPDD5T RAM in January 2023, where T stands for Turbo. SK hynix called this the "world's fastest mobile DRAM" chip, boasting transfer speeds in the range of 9,600Gbps — a 12.5% increase over the preeminent LPDDR5X standard.
Notably, Samsung is sourcing RAM for the Galaxy S23 series from Micron despite its own expertise in microelectronics. For the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung may stick with Micron's LPDDR5X chips, manufacture its own, or score the faster chips from SK hynix.
Is Galaxy S24 set for peak performance?
The Galaxy S24's RAM upgrade could be accompanied by faster Universal Flash Storage (or UFS) technology, as per the tipster's previous leak. The Galaxy S23 series comes with the industry-leading UFS 4.0 drive, which could be replaced with a more advanced UFS 4.1 storage. However, UFS 4.1 has yet to be demoed, as opposed to the faster RAM module.
Understandably, the Galaxy S24 series will also get a generational upgrade regarding the phones' chipset. The series is set to be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip in most markets, with Samsung's Exynos 2400 prevailing in a handful of others. Besides revealing the apparent upgrade, the leaker also revealed the architectural changes to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, including a more powerful CPU and GPU along with an upgraded modem.
It remains to be seen whether the Galaxy S24 series also comes with a bespoke overclocked version of Qualcomm's flagship mobile platform, as does the Galaxy S23 series. Of course, these leaks are too early in the Galaxy S24 series' product evaluation cycle and may change or prove false in the coming months as more convincing leaks appear.