Samsung recently announced a major breakthrough in the development of RAM for mobile devices, revealing that the Galaxy S21, scheduled for release early next year, could feature it before any other product of its generation.

According to the company, it has begun mass production of a new 10-nanometer 16GB LPDDR5 RAM chip manufactured using a new technology called extreme ultraviolet technology.

The process creates a component that, according to Samsung, is 30% thinner than the LPDDR5 modules found in recent smartphones and 16% faster than the current 12GB chips found in the latest devices. This includes the just-released $1,299 Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

According to Samsung, this new technology "overcomes a major development hurdle" of packaging more RAM in a smaller size in devices with significant space constraints, such as smartphones. Not long ago, 8GB was the standard amount of RAM in high-end Android products, but some handset makers like Samsung and OnePlus have pushed the industry toward 12GB and even 16GB in their most premium models in recent months.

Of course, the more RAM a device has at its disposal, the more bandwidth it has to handle multiple tasks at once, including background processes that the user is not aware of. And the faster the memory is, the more readily available it is and thus the faster the device can process each task.

According to Samsung, these new chips are so fast that they can transfer 51 GB of data per second. In addition to its own mobile products, one can expect to see these chips in devices from rival cell phone manufacturers.

Samsung also plans to bring its LPDDR5 solution to the automotive sector, which will undoubtedly benefit modern vehicles that rely on high-speed data transfer, from advanced infotainment systems to driver assistance technology.

Given that Samsung is a major RAM manufacturer, one can expect to see this technology blossom in 2021 and be incorporated into many premium devices. However, the company usually debuts its innovations with its own hardware and eventually spreads them to other industries, so it is still likely to debut first in the Galaxy S21.

And this RAM could make the Galaxy S21 a serious competitor to the iPhone 12, which is expected to arrive this fall. iPhone 12 is expected to feature a new A14 Bionic processor based on a new 5-nanometer manufacturing process that is up to 15% faster and 30% performance improvements are expected.

The iPhone 12 will have 4GB of RAM, and the iPhone 12 Pro model should have 6GB of RAM based on leaked information. However, until now iPhones have outperformed Android phones despite having less RAM; the Galaxy S21 may change that equation.