Experts tear apart Trump's 'awful' new scam as 'deeply unserious'

11 July

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he departs the White House in Washington, D.C., May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

More critics in the technology space have begun to get their hands on one of President Donald Trump and his family's biggest scams, the "Trump phone," and their reactions have been brutal so far, with some tarring the cheap device as "awful" and "deeply unserious."

First launched over a year ago, Trump Mobile was an initiative launched by The Trump Organization, claiming that it would be able to sell an affordable-yet-premium smartphone, the "T1," made entirely in the U.S., in keeping with the president's aggressive anti-imports agenda. In the months since then, the idea has appeared to devolve rapidly, with the design going from the one initially shown, looking like an all-gold iPhone, to the version that is now being sent to the press, which is an old HTC model with cheap plastic parts painted gold. The packaging also touts that it is merely "assembled" in the U.S., suggesting that the parts were made overseas.

Despite around 600,000 customers placing a deposit, phones have yet to actually ship to customers. Finished models have, however, gradually made their way into the hands of mobile reviewers, and the results have been rough.

In a video for Android Authority, reviewer C. Scott Brown said that, while the phone was not as bad as he had anticipated, it was still "awful, and not worth your money." Throughout the video, Brown further trashed the phone for its "gaudy" faux-gold look, which he noted actually looks "mustard yellow" most of the time; its "very, very cheap" plastic shell; its "dated" curved screen; and its main chipset, which was first released back in 2023 and "was pretty mediocre even back then." The phone also notably comes with Truth Social preinstalled.

In another video, this time for The Verge, reviewer Dominic Preston summed up the T1 as "deeply unserious" as far as modern smartphones are concerned. This tacky ethos, he explained, was evident in the "T1" watermark included in the corner of every picture taken with the phone right out of the box, a setting that users must manually turn off. Preston also touched on the fact that the phone is a reskinned HTC model, making it "dated right out of the gate." None of its features or specifications were "notable or novel, or even impressive for a $500 phone," either.

"The most important thing here is actually that I don't trust Trump Mobile to support this phone in any meaningful, ongoing way," Preston concluded. "I don't know if this phone will ever be updated to Android 16, let alone 17 or future versions we haven't seen yet. I don't even know if it's going to get security patches. There's a real risk that anyone who buys this phone will have an out-of-date, insecure device within months, not years."

He added: "This is not a real phone. And we don't have to treat it like one anymore."

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