The latest product marketed under President Donald Trump’s name is the $499 T1 “Trump phone,” announced Monday, June 16, alongside a cellular service plan called Trump Mobile. But early attempts to pre-order the Chinese-built phone are being met with errors.
Payment and shipping errors
Those errors, first reported by 404 Media’s Joseph Cox, raise questions over whether customers will begin receiving their phones in August as promised. Cox noted that the webpage offering the device failed, as did an attempt to make the required $100 down payment.
Regardless, Cox wrote, the site inexplicably charged his credit card $64.70, rather than the $100 down payment. He then received a confirmation email saying he would be notified when the device shipped – even though the site never asked for a shipping address.
When Straight Arrow News tried to replicate Cox’s experience, an error message appeared along with a charge for $65.38. The site asked only for a billing address for the debit card used, not for a shipping destination.
Built in China for ‘hard-working Americans’
Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, unveiled the mobile service during an event at New York City’s Trump Tower. The launch coincided with the 10-year anniversary of Trump announcing his first presidential campaign.
A statement attributed to Eric Trump said the Trump Phone was designed for “hard-working Americans” who deserve a “wireless service that’s affordable, reflects their values, and delivers reliable quality they can count on.”
Eric Trump said that the T1 will “eventually” be built in the United States. But one expert, Tinglong Dai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, told Newsweek that “barring miracles, building a smartphone entirely in the U.S. by September is all but impossible.”
The device, based on analysis of its specifications by CNBC, will likely be built in China for the foreseeable future. It remains unclear whether the device would be subject to President Trump’s tariffs.
Max Weinbach, an analyst at the market research firm Creative Strategies, believes the T1 is a rebranded Chinese-made Wingtech REVVL 7 Pro 5G, which is listed online for $169.
Questions have also been raised over potential conflicts of interest. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group, told The New York Times that “getting a federal agency to hold the company accountable if service fails or things go off the rails” could be unlikely under Trump’s administration.
Trump Mobile did not respond to an inquiry from SAN.
The Trump phone joins a long list of products sold under the president’s name, including Bibles, watches, sneakers and a cryptocurrency meme coin.
Questions about specs
Descriptions of the phone’s specifications on the Trump Mobile website have also raised questions. Under “Processor & RAM,” no processor is listed. The RAM, or the phone’s memory, is listed as 12GB of “storage.” And the phone’s internal storage, which appears to be 256GB, is listed under a section titled “Memory.”
The screen is listed as both 6.8 and 6.78 inches. It is described as a “Punch-Hole AMOLED,” although the term punch-hole apparently refers to the front-facing camera, not the screen.
Trump Mobile’s website, according to CNET, initially described the battery as having a “5,000mAh long life camera.” It has since been corrected to remove references to the camera.
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Author: Alan Judd
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