Imagined as an original made-in-America smartphone, but realized as a made-elsewhere knockoff, the $500 Trump Phone is finally here. It's an Alibaba-tier variant of the years-old HTC U24 Pro and has an American flag with the wrong number of stripes on it.
Nine months after their delivery was originally promised, Trump Mobile this week sent T1 phones to members of the media and said it was mailing out units to customers who placed pre-orders. NBC News received one of the first review units and tested the device, which is no longer being marketed as "Made in the USA" — a claim used when the phone was first announced.
"Coming from a man who famously wrote a book titled The Art of the Deal, it sure seems like a bad one," writes Tech Advisor's Jon Mundy, though it might be pointed out that Trump did not write The Art of the Deal.
Few two-year-old phones seem all that great when we compare them with what's available today. However, it's instructive to note that we weren't massively impressed with the HTC U24 Pro at the time of its launch.
In his 2.5 stars out of 5 review (a big old ouch in itself), TA contributor Martyn Casserly found the phone to be "hard to recommend" over its mid-range rivals.
Other commentators report that the T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5G is another variant of the same hardware design. Walmart has them for a little over $100.
Even if you're all aboard the Trump train, there's no reason to get this crapgadget over a Google Pixel 10a, which is the same price but doesn't come with Truth Social pre-installed. You can even put a made-in-America sticker of the real American flag on it.
Newsweek has some coverage of annoyed consumers, though the text is mostly online gadflies who surely knew what was coming.
