Summary: Reports say some cheap phones now ship with RAM taken from scrapped ones. The DRAM shortage behind it is real. Here is how used memory gets into a product, and four checks that stop it.
Reports from Taiwan this month say some ultra-low-cost phone makers are putting RAM from scrapped phones into new ones. The chips are five or six years old, desoldered, tested and soldered onto new boards.
The reports are not confirmed and no brands are named. But the shortage behind them is real, and it affects anyone who builds connected devices, not only phone makers.
What was reported
On 20 October 2026, Taiwan’s TechNews reported that some ultra-cheap Chinese phone brands reuse LPDDR memory salvaged from old phones. TrendForce picked up the story. It added that the practice seems limited to unbranded, very low-cost phones, and it named no manufacturers.
So treat the specific claim with care. The reason it is plausible is the part worth paying attention to.
Why it’s plausible: the DRAM shortage
Memory makers are moving production capacity to the high-bandwidth memory that AI servers need. The older, mainstream DRAM that most embedded and consumer devices use is getting less of that capacity. It is expected to stay short and expensive into 2027.
For a device maker, a shortage shows up in three ways:
- Long lead times on the exact part your board was designed for.
- Allocation: your distributor can only give you part of the quantity you ordered.
- Brokers offering the part you can’t get, from stock nobody can trace.
That third one is where used memory comes in.
How used memory gets into a product
Few hardware teams would knowingly buy used RAM. The risk is buying it without knowing. There are three common ways that happens:
- Through a broker. When the authorised channel has nothing, brokers do. Some of that stock is genuine surplus. Some of it is pulled from scrapped boards, cleaned and re-marked.
- Through a sub-supplier. Your contract manufacturer is short too. If the contract doesn’t say where memory must come from, the factory may solve the shortage for you, quietly.
- Inside a module. If you buy a system-on-module or a finished sub-assembly, the memory on it was sourced by someone else. You inherit their choices.
A salvaged chip often passes a simple power-on test. It boots. The problems come later: higher failure rates after years of earlier use, damage from desoldering heat, and behaviour that drifts with temperature. In a device that has to run in the field for years, that turns into returns, field failures and a hard-to-find root cause.
Four checks that keep used RAM out
What protects you is mostly unglamorous. None of it is expensive compared with one batch of field failures.
1. Authorised sourcing, written into the contract
Buy memory from the manufacturer or its authorised distributors. Then write that rule into the contract with your manufacturer, including for substitutions. “Equivalent part” should never mean “any part from anywhere”.
2. Incoming inspection that looks at the chip
Check what is actually on the board or in the reel, not only the paperwork:
- Markings and date codes that match the order and each other
- Signs of rework: uneven solder balls, scratches, re-marking
- The ID the chip reports electronically, compared with what the label says
3. A memory stress test at end of line
“It boots” is not a memory test. A proper end-of-line test runs a stress pattern across the whole memory, so weak cells and bad solder joints fail in the factory instead of in a customer’s home.
4. A second memory vendor, qualified before you need it
The best time to qualify a second source is before the shortage. A team that has only one approved part takes whatever is available when that part runs out. A team with two can switch.
What we do on LaMetric
On LaMetric devices, the same board supports RAM from Samsung and Nanya. When one is hard to get, we switch to the other without a redesign.
Every LaMetric device also gets a RAM stress test in its end-of-line test, whichever vendor’s chip is on the board. Together with the rest of the production test, it keeps our manufacturing defect rate below 1%.
The takeaway
A shortage tests your supply chain. Your production test tells you whether it passed.
If you are planning a production run in the next year, check three things now. Does your manufacturing contract say where memory must come from? Is a second memory vendor qualified? And would your end-of-line test notice a six-year-old RAM chip?
If you’d like to compare notes on memory sourcing or end-of-line testing, we’re happy to talk it through.
Source: Notebookcheck on the TechNews and TrendForce reports.
