Apparently, things change quickly in the world of the Trump phone. It’s been 10 days since the Trump Organization announced it would be launching the $499 T1 smartphone, and in that time, there have already been a confusing series of changes to a product that was initially supposed to be arriving as soon as August.
Now, you can only expect it “later this year,” according to the most recent update of the Trump Mobile website, with all mention of it “coming soon” gone. That is not the only change. The core details of the phone also seem to be somewhat transient, so much so that at the moment it is something of a mystery as to what exactly would arrive at your door if you were to put down your $100 pre-order today.
The most notable change is the not-entirely unexpected pivot away from a phone that the press release said would be “designed and built in the United States” to one that is “brought to life” in the USA, with “American values in mind” and with “American hands behind every device.” How conveniently vague.
Eric Trump had already tried to pull back on the American-made claims during interviews on the first day of the announcement, stating this was merely aspirational—something that could happen “eventually.” It seems now that the website has conceded that, too—even if a Trump Mobile customer service employee doubled down on the original claim, telling WIRED “we don’t have the name of the manufacturer yet, but they are going to be made here in America.”
The actual specs of the phone have also been mysteriously changed, almost as if the phone that was first announced was more a wish-list of features rather than a locked down production model. The T1 no longer has a 6.78-inch screen, but one that is 6.25 inches, and there is now no promise of 12GB RAM, or any mention of it at all.
There have also been some much-needed technical corrections—it doesn’t have a “5000 mAh long-life camera,” but a “5000 mAh battery,” and the T1 has been given the correct legal superscript, changing from an “SM” service mark to a “TM” trademark. Also, thankfully the strange promise of “front cameras” has now been qualified as just the one “front camera.”
And it’s not just the phone itself that has seen changes. The coverage map for the Trump Mobile wireless service has been nuked from the site entirely, and now 404s. As WIRED previously reported, the now vanished map had been borrowed from a cell service provider called Ultra Mobile, and referenced the Gulf of Mexico rather than Donald Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America” nomenclature.
The relatively cheap $499 price tag of the smartphone has been clarified as requiring an ongoing subscription to Trump Mobile (“You acknowledge you will be charged $100 today for your first month of Trump Mobile service and shipping and activation fees. You also authorize a charge of $399 plus sales tax to be collected at the time your T1 phone is shipped.”). And there have been some additional liability protections added in the legal footer, particularly around the third-party services offered on the T1.
For now, the T1 smartphone seems to very much be a work in progress. Whether it ever makes it out of pre-orders, and in what final form it materializes, if it does—that all remains to be seen. We had questions last week. If anything, we have even more now.
