Xiaomi is reportedly working on a smartphone with an unreleased Snapdragon chip, 16GB LPDDR6 RAM, and 1TB UFS 5.0 storage.
Memory and chip costs continue to spike, prompting many brands to raise smartphone prices. Yet, this seemingly won’t stop Xiaomi from exploring better memory and storage solutions for its future devices.
According to Digital Chat Station, the Chinese brand is testing a new configuration with 16GB of LPDDR6 RAM and 1TB of UFS 5.0 storage. Interestingly, the tipster claimed that the solution is now being tested with the yet-to-be-announced SM8975 chip, believed to be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chip. As per DCS, the combined cost of the solution RAM and storage surpasses the price of the said processor, which is already expected to be an expensive SoC.
The phone’s name was not revealed, but it could be a flagship model in the upcoming Xiaomi 18 series. To recall, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra in the current flagship series features LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. In China, the Leica Edition’s 16GB/1TB costs CN¥8,999 ($1,280). Globally, the phone (rebranded as the Leica Leitzphone powered by Xiaomi) with the same configuration costs €1,999 in Europe and £1,699 in the UK.
If Xiaomi indeed introduces costlier RAM and storage solutions (and the upcoming high-end Snapdragon chip) in its next flagship phones, we expect the next numbered series to see a significant price increase.
