GoKawiilFrom the day it was announced, on June 16th, 2025, the Trump phone sounded ridiculous. The T1 Phone 8002 (gold version), as it was officially called, was a combination of contradictory specs, product images that were clearly not photographs of a real phone, and the worrying requirement of a $100 deposit to secure a preorder of a $499 phone with no release date. But none of Trump Mobile’s outlandish announcements were as bold as the claim that the phone would be “designed and built in the United States.”
The US has next to no phone manufacturing infrastructure, few engineers with the required expertise, and little of the affordable, flexible mass labor that makes building electronics possible at scale in China, India, and across southeast Asia. Only one company currently makes a phone in the US, the Purism Liberty Phone, and it costs $1,999. The idea that Trump Mobile could build a phone for a quarter of the price in three months or less sounded impossible.
A year later, that’s proven to be true. The phone has changed form and shape so many times that I’ve had trouble keeping track of it — and I was keeping track of it, checking in every week with Trump Mobile, asking what the T1 Phone was, if it would actually be made in the States, and when it would ship. Because, a year on from its debut, it still hasn’t shipped.
But what is the Trump phone? I am asking that quite literally, because even after a year, I still have more questions than answers. Where is it really made? Why has it been repeatedly delayed? And will the regular folks who slapped down $100 for their golden phone ever see it arrive? I still don’t know, but I’ve spent the last 12 months trying to find out.
The original T1 Phone design was certainly… unique. Image: Trump Mobile
I remember exactly where I was when the T1 Phone was announced. I was at my desk, frantically trying to get my head around the news that the Trump family was launching a golden phone, emblazoned with the US flag, which it claimed would be made in the USA.
I’d already reported on the possibility that Donald Trump might enter the mobile market, after trademark applications for “Trump” and “T1” were filed in the US. That meant that Trump Mobile itself — a small mobile operator, piggybacking on T-Mobile’s cell service, with an overpriced $47.45 monthly plan — wasn’t a total surprise, besides the fact that most presidents don’t own mobile networks.
The more The Verge team dug into the launch that day, the stranger it got. Trump Mobile’s website said the phone would launch in September 2025, but a press release from the Trump Organization claimed it would arrive in August. There was a press conference, as Don Jr. and Eric Trump squeezed onto an uncomfortably small stage in New York’s Trump Tower alongside three Trump Mobile executives. They barely spoke about the phone itself, but instead promised that subscribers to the mobile plan would benefit from perks including international texting, roadside assistance, and telemedicine appointments. When The Verge boss Nilay Patel phoned the Trump Mobile call center, he reached a representative of the company who knew little of the phone except that it was being made in the US; when Reuters phoned the same number it was answered by Omega Auto Care. Later that day, Eric Trump popped up on right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson’s podcast to show off his “golden phone,” only to briefly flash what was quite clearly an iPhone in a gold case in front of the camera. This would not be the only time Trump Mobile tried to pass off another phone as the T1.
As for the claims it would be produced domestically? It took less than two weeks for Trump Mobile to walk back its “made in the US” claims, updating the website to say the phone is “proudly American” and has “American hands behind every device.” When I eventually spoke to two company executives, Don Hendrickson and Eric Thomas, the following February — after months of sending weekly unanswered emails — they admitted that the phone fell short of Federal Trade Commission regulations around marketing products as US-made.
“There are certain things that you have to do in order to say ‘made in America,’” Hendrickson said, before claiming that the company had only ever described US manufacturing as a “goal.” This, at least, is flatly false: The Trump Organization press release is still live today, and says the T1 “is a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States.”
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