Galaxy S25 Series Doesn’t Equip Samsung’s RAM & Storage Chips

Last year, Samsung’s semiconductor business struggled on several fronts. Much has been said about the company’s 3nm process issues that prevented the mass production of the Exynos 2500 SoC. However, there were also problems with its memory chips that were being outpaced by the competition. Now, it has been confirmed that the Galaxy S25 series does not use Samsung’s RAM and storage chips.

Micron supplies the Galaxy S25 series’ RAM and storage chips

Micron Technology and Samsung itself confirmed that the Galaxy S25 series uses both its LPDDR5X memory and its UFS 4.0 storage chips. The American company Micron is a direct rival of Samsung in the memory and storage chip segment. So, it must have been a huge financial blow for the South Korean giant to have had to turn to an external supplier for key components. The company already had to pay Qualcomm to include the expensive Snapdragon 8 Elite chip in all Galaxy S25 models instead of just the Ultra variant.

High performance memory and storage meet the power of #GalaxyAI ⚡ Huge thanks to @MicronTech for helping make the #GalaxyS25 Series even more powerful! 🙌 https://t.co/wlKy1zecTr

— Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) February 21, 2025

Micron uses an advanced 1β (1-beta) process technology to produce its memory chips. This results in higher energy efficiency, something especially useful in mobile devices. The possibility of Samsung ditching its own memory chips in the Galaxy S25 devices emerged in early January. At that time, there were reports of overheating issues with Samsung’s memory chips. There was no low yield in the factories this time. However, the higher-than-expected energy consumption was not up to par with Samsung’s quality standards for its premium phones.

Samsung could integrate its chips into future manufacturing batches

Another report from January claimed that Micron memory chips will be present in “the initial volume” of the Galaxy S25. So, subsequent production runs could equip Samsung chips. In fact, the company may use an improved version where the production process changes from 13nm to 12nm. It remains to be seen whether these improved chips will be up to par with Micron’s.

It’s noteworthy that all previous Galaxy flagship phones have used Samsung’s own memory and storage chips. This is the first time the company has had to turn to third parties for these components. It seems that the problems at Samsung’s factories in 2024 were more far-reaching than expected. The reliance on third-party suppliers for key components such as RAM, storage, and processors could be the reason for the few hardware changes in the Galaxy S25 lineup. After all, the company’s profit margins have probably shrunken quite a bit.