Late last week Google admitted it would be pushing up the prices of the Pixel 11 smartphone range when it arrives next month. That’s because the company says it can no longer “shield” consumers from the cost of acquiring RAM components.
Google says the “economics have fundamentally shifted and we’re not immune to that” and as a result “adjustments” will be made to match the “realities”. That’ll start with the Pixel 11 series when it is announced on August 12, although we don’t yet know how significant the price bumps will be.
However, another interesting element of Google’s Vice President of Devices and Services, Shakil Barkat’s chat with 9to5Google was the way he spoke of mitigating the need for so much RAM in the first place.
No, it’s not scaling back on the Gemini AI needs that consumes so much of the damn RAM in the first place, but it is “aggressively engineering its way through these challenges.” There’s an “dedicated effort” to “enable devices to have less RAM while maintaining a great user experience,” according to Barkat.
And there in lies the big challenge isn’t it? Can you find ways to keep the experience the same by using 8GB of RAM instead of 12GB of RAM or 16GB of RAM? Can you manage resources in such an efficient way that you don’t need to charge an extra hundred because you’re having 8GB of RAM do the work of 12GB of RAM?
Furthermore, can Google admit its own role in driving up the price of components, it is now admitting will be passed on to consumers? The advanced Gemini Intelligence features, that run on device, require 12GB of RAM for starters, which already rules out a bunch of existing Pixel phones.
But Gemini itself runs off countless servers that require the same high speed memory silicon that is required for smartphones. Can Google run those servers far more efficiently, without decimating the planet or the component supply. I don’t expect Google to have the honest conversation with consumers about its direct effect on the cost of silicon, but I do expect them to mitigate for it.
Read the full article here
