GoKawiilTrump Mobile's golden T1 Phone now costs $749. That's a $250 price hike from $499, making the T1 more expensive than the iPhone 17e. The price hike was first reported by The Verge, which also noted that the provider didn't make an announcement about it and just quietly updated its website.
While Trump Mobile didn't explain why the T1 now costs a lot more, tech companies have been raising the prices of their products across the board recently due to skyrocketing costs of RAM. No one is safe from the RAMageddon, which is what people are calling the memory chip shortage problem currently plaguing the electronics industry due to massive AI buildouts. In fact, Apple just increased the prices of older iPhones by $100, almost three months after it raised the prices of iPads (by up to $200), MacBooks (by up to $500) and its Mac Studio computer (by up to $1,300).
In addition, the T1's price increase seems expected. Trump Mobile's execs previously said that the $499 price tag was just introductory and that buyers could be paying $999 for it in the future. Take note that an iFixit teardown had revealed that the phone isn't made in the US, which Trump Mobile initially claimed, and is pretty much a reskinned version of an HTC handset.