Samsung turns to cheaper Chinese displays for Galaxy S26 FE and A57 as memory prices bite

Samsung is going downmarket with its phone OLED screens, eschewing its own display department production and replacing it with panels made by CSOT, a second-tier Chinese manufacturer.

The screens coming from China Star (CSOT) are 20% cheaper than those that Samsung produces for its midrange phones in the Galaxy A or Fan Edition series.

The goal is to offset rising memory and processing chip costs that have doubled in the span of a few short months. The Crucial 64GB DDR5 RAM kit, for instance, is currently discounted down to $580 on Amazon, but its price has risen twofold since November.

Sparked by the AI data center demand craze, this phenomenon turned the RAM and storage memory into the most expensive components in a phone, taking the reins from the system chip and the display.

Some of the world's biggest phone makers, like Oppo, Vivo, or OnePlus, have already announced price increases for their smartphones in China, but Samsung's midrange fare is very price-sensitive, so it prefers to try and cut manufacturing costs instead.

Samsung Display has reportedly argued hard before the conglomerate's management that its revenue will be greatly squeezed if it loses the bread-and-butter A-series after it lost orders from other phone makers because of the memory price crisis, but to no avail.

According to industry sources, Samsung has now ordered no fewer than 15 million OLED panels from CSOT and intends to assemble the upcoming Galaxy A57 and Galaxy S26 Fan Edition with them. Needless to say, this is because the CSOT displays are much cheaper while their quality is considered passable for Samsung's midrange phone tier.