Latest news with #TrumpPhone
Phone Arena
2 hours ago
- Business
- Phone Arena
There are so many red flags around Trump Mobile and the T1 Phone that it's not even funny
Let's face it, a Trump-branded mobile device was in a lot of ways a long time coming. And if there's anything truly surprising about the T1 Phone unveiled yesterday, it's probably that it's not actually called the "Trump Phone." After all, that would have been a natural continuator of many of the President's failed past products and businesses, from Trump Drinks and Trump Ice to Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks. But I'm not here today to focus (much) on the branding subtlety of a handset some of you might instantly associate with T-Mobile rather than Donald Trump and the President's far less subtle Trump Mobile alternative for the likes of Verizon, AT&T, and yes, T-Mobile . Instead, I'm going to quickly try to identify the biggest warning signs surrounding The Trump Organization's newest business ventures and any reasons I can find to be optimistic about these projects... now that the official website is actually functional. Like I said, we shouldn't be surprised that POTUS is taking matters into his own hands in the war against foreign manufacturing, but if you're the least bit familiar with how today's mobile industry works, you'll instantly realize how unrealistic it is to promise a "MADE IN THE USA" (in all caps, of course) phone when you have zero experience in the field. I'm not sure Google or Motorola could pull off such a task (unless Trump forces them with a 1000 percent tariff or something), while analysts estimated just a couple of months ago that an iPhone manufactured stateside from scratch would have to cost around $3,500 to be (barely) profitable for Apple. But here's where I stop taking Trump's "game-changing" efforts in the smartphone market any more seriously than those "Digital Trading Card NFTs" released by the 47th President of the United States a few years back (yes, that was real life too). Absolutely everyone knows that there's no way the T1 Phone will be "made in the USA" (with or without caps), and that includes Eric Trump. Eric Trump, June 16, 2025 Why promise something that you can't deliver? Perhaps to justify an artificially inflated $499 price point. What happens when the T1 Phone starts shipping and it will become even clearer that the device is in fact made in China, Vietnam, or maybe India? I have no idea, but my popcorn is ready, as I know Eric's explanations will be pure entertainment. At least as entertaining as seeing the T1 Phone slated for an August release on the website and September 2025 availability on the official Trump Mobile platform while knowing full well that both ETAs are actually highly unrealistic. In theory, yes. For instance, The Trump Organization's "transformational, new cellular service" claims to match the nation's "three major carriers" in terms of both 5G availability and speed, which sounds great. It may even be true, but at the end of the day, Trump Mobile seems to be little more than a rebrand of a teeny-tiny MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) called Liberty Mobile Wireless. Unfortunately, there's no way to know if Liberty has more customers than employees at least, but it feels... unwise to pay $47.47 (plus tax) a month for the wireless services of such a shady enterprise. Yes, The 47 Plan includes a lot of neat stuff, from unlimited talk, texts, and data to international calling to "100 destinations" and unlimited 24/7/365 "telehealth via video or phone", but you know where you can get similar features and perks (minus the last one)? The 47 Plan is by no means priced competitively. | Image Credit -- Trump Mobile Let's be real, if any other industry newcomer came out with a $499 smartphone with 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, a 50 + 2 + 2MP triple rear-facing camera system, 5,000mAh battery with 20W charging support, and an unspecified processor in this day and age, you'd either be mocking them out of the market or shrugging your shoulders in complete indifference. One thing you definitely wouldn't do is give them $100 to secure your place in front of the line for a gold-coated phone with the American flag ineptly Photoshopped on its back in the lone official promotional "picture", now, would you? A lot of jokes can be made (and some have already garnered a lot of social media reactions) on Trump Mobile's advertised coverage or shady privacy policy, but humor aside, you should really treat this venture with caution and think long and hard before putting a pre-order in. After all, why not just wait until August or September and at least check out a few more product images (ideally, starring the actual product) first? Maybe even shop around a little for more competitive wireless plans. Secure your connection now at a bargain price! We may earn a commission if you make a purchase Check Out The Offer
Gizmodo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Gizmodo
The Trump Phone Isn't Just a Bad Deal, It's a Full-On Privacy Nightmare
Bad news, folks: we all went to sleep, woke up, and the Trump phone is still here. That means a couple of things. For one, it means the T1 phone wasn't the result of a spicy, food-fueled fever dream or a bad batch of crazy-style mushrooms—it's a real phone that costs real money, made by a real president, who thinks 'fox in the henhouse' is an allegory for how to win bigly in the U.S. government. It also means something else depressing, and it's got nothing to do with making America great and everything to do with undermining your privacy. There are a lot of bad things about the Trump phone. There's the gaudy, I-hate-poor-people gold aesthetic; the 'long life camera' that I assume is supposed to mean 'long-life battery' that is actually not long-life at all; and the fact that it's masquerading as an American-made device, though it clearly is not being made in America and likely never will be. My personal favorite is the fact that it's 5G enabled, which, as we all know, may not jibe well for a certain subsect of people whose conspiratorial cult (QAnon) thinks 5G caused COVID-19. But all of that could be trivial when you unpack how disastrous a Trump phone (at least in theory) could really be. As I mentioned yesterday, after the T1's announcement, phones aren't just any product; they're kind of conduits into your whole life. You do everything on your phone: banking, talking to friends and family, browsing the web, and shopping. And beyond that, you do stuff that might be of even more interest to someone who's directly involved in politics—registering to vote, espousing or denouncing political views, and donating to campaigns. What's to prevent, say, I don't know, someone who works in government with direct access to that information from collecting and using that data for their own purpose? There's a reason why the government doesn't own the platforms we compute on, and it starts with 'c' and ends in 'onflict of interest.' Some actual specs for the upcoming Trump Phone: -5000mAh long life camera (?) -under "Processor & RAM" it reads "Storage 12GB RAM", so maybe the next phone will have a processor -two of the three rear cameras are 2MP — jacksfilms (@jacksfilms) June 16, 2025 Sure, I know that our devices are already a privacy minefield to begin with, and doubly so are the platforms that we access through them, but something tells me that encoding politics directly into our devices isn't going to skew those privacy pitfalls in a positive direction. No technology is completely agnostic at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean we should just give up on making our hardware as safe and as neutral as possible. I don't want to be an alarmist here; Trump's phone likely won't end up being a threat to that already-tenuous digital privacy for several reasons. One is that this phone sucks, and I don't think many people will be tempted to buy it, let alone use it every day or throw their most personal information into it. Secondly, even if this thing did sell, only the most hardcore Trump supporters would be using it, so the privacy pitfalls would only affect Trump's voting base. Lastly, I have my doubts that this thing is even real. There's a high chance, if I were a betting man, that Trump's family never even gets their shit together enough to make this monstrosity a reality, especially if initial attempts to purchase it are any indication. But despite all of that, the idea is enough for me to take a breath, pause, and ask, 'Wait, what the hell is going on here?' Trump may be the first U.S. president to try and sell the American public a smartphone, but the precedents he sets have a pesky way of resetting standards for the worse. The T1 feels like exactly the kind of slippery slope that could send you and your poor brittle tailbone straight to the emergency room—sans adequate health insurance. Phones aren't shoes; they're not memeocins; they're not NFT Christmas ornaments or commemorative coins—they're people's lives, for better and often worse. So, let's all make the right call here and agree that we should leave our most crucial gadgets to the Tim Apples of the world.
The Verge
2 hours ago
- Business
- The Verge
Who is really behind the Trump Mobile T1 phone?
In case you missed it, the Trump Organization announced yesterday that it plans to release a $499 Trump-branded, 'built in the United States' phone later this year. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization doubled down on this claim to The Wall Street Journal, saying 'manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.' But unless the organization has somehow hidden an entire domestic mobile device supply chain right under our noses, this is virtually impossible. The T1 Phone, as it's called, lists some decent midrange specs like a 6.8-inch OLED 120Hz refresh rate screen. Offering it for $500 as soon as this fall? That would take a miracle. Case in point: a company called Purism makes a device called the Liberty Phone, which sources many of its parts from US companies and assembles it here. The cost? $2000, and you won't find something as luxurious as an OLED panel there. More likely the T1 will be a white label device with most or all of its production handled by a Chinese ODM, or original design manufacturer. These dozen or so companies are responsible for as much as 44 percent of smartphone shipments globally, largely handling budget models while OEMs like Samsung and Huawei focus on producing their own high-end devices. So, which of these budget phones is closest to the pin? Because we love a good mystery, Verge staff spent the past 24 hours combing the likes of Amazon and GSMArena trying to piece it together. With just a dubious set of specs to go on, we've narrowed it down to a handful of devices that might fit the description. Is the real T1 Phone somewhere in the mix? Will it be a customized version of one of these devices built to the Trump Organization's specifications? Was this all a silly waste of time because this phone does not and will never exist at all? Who can say? In the meantime, leave a comment and let us know if you figured it out. DOOGEE Note 58 We found this one on Amazon through a rigorous search process, by which I mean we typed 'Big Android phone' into the search bar. It's the spitting image of an iPhone, or at least looks like someone used a rendering of a rumored iPhone and added the word DOOGEE to it. The camera array looks about right, and the screen is the correct size. It also claims to run Android 15. But it comes with a 6250mAh battery, which is bigger than the 5000mAh cell in the T1 that was initially described as a 'long life camera' on the product page. Someone eventually fixed that yesterday, I guess. Ulefone Note 18 Ultra We've got another iPhone imitator here, and this one has the right RAM and storage combo, plus its 6.78-inch screen matches the description. But it's a 90Hz panel, and the T1 Phone claims to have a 120Hz display. The Ulefone also has an ultrawide camera, which the T1 seems not to have. But can't you picture it in Mar-A-Lago Gold? Wouldn't it be just fetching? Revvl 7 Made by Wingtech, the Revvl 7 was at one point sold under T-Mobile branding. It's no longer listed on T-Mobile's website, but you can still find it on Amazon. If you split the difference between it and the Revvl 7 Pro, which was mysteriously pulled from shelves last fall and analyst Max Weinbach certainly thinks is a top contender for the T1, then you get something that looks a lot like the T1's description. Maybe there's a custom version somewhere between the two. Blu G84 Maybe it's the marble accents on this one, but I feel like this is a strong contender. This one has the headphone jack and the right-sized 6.8-inch screen, though it's a 90Hz panel. There's the Bold K20 too, which conveniently already comes in a gold finish. It would look right at home next to a bunch of gold spray painted decor from Alibaba.
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Tech billionaire Mark Cuban thinks Donald Trump phone could be all about …
Tech billionaire Mark Cuban has predicted that the newly launched Trump-branded smartphone 's primary purpose may not be the device itself, but rather a strategic way to generate revenue through cryptocurrency. Replying to a post on social media platform X (earlier Twitter) about the newly announced Trump-branded phones, the billionaire investor proposed that the $499 "T1" phone may likely feature a pre-loaded crypto wallet. Cuban also suggested that this wallet may integrate entities like World Liberty Financial (WLF - a crypto company that's connected to the Trump family) and the Trump coin, along with their stablecoins. Cuban believes that 'whatever transactions they can create will generate fees for them,' highlighting different ways to facilitate sales and preload assets onto the device to generate income. This comes after US President's sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, unveiled the Trump Phone this week. What Mark Cuban said about the Trump 'T1' phone by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch vàng CFDs với mức chênh lệch giá thấp nhất IC Markets Đăng ký Undo This all started with a post shared by Cuban on X, which included a video of Eric Trump introducing Trump Mobile. Sharing this video, Cuban wrote: 'I just want to know who makes them and where.' Replying to this post, a user named Gary Koepnick said: 'I'll never understand how 25% of the population can't see him for what he is.' Further responding to Koepnick's comments, Cuban wrote: 'I think the smart game they are probably playing is to put a crypto wallet on the phone that leverages WLF, $Trump and their stable coins. Whatever transactions they can create generate fees for them, and there are so many ways to sell things and pre-load whatever they want.' However, it's important to note that there is no mention on the Trump Mobile website of cryptos. If Mark Cuban's theory proves accurate, the Trump phone could serve as a gateway to a Trump-branded Web3 ecosystem, potentially preloaded with digital wallets, assets, and features enabling blockchain transactions. In an interview with Fox Business, Eric Trump said that the T1 device would 'revolutionise cellphones,' while Donald Trump Jr. described it as a 'true value' alternative to mainstream carriers, made in America, during a press conference in New York City. Trump Jr. also stated that the venture aims to offer more than just wireless coverage and a smartphone — it will include services like telemedicine and roadside assistance. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Business Insider
7 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Mark Cuban thinks the Trump phone could be all about crypto fees
Mark Cuban thinks the Trump smartphone announced Monday may include a crypto wallet linked to Trump coins. He said it may generate fees through $Trump and stablecoin transactions. The phone is the latest moneymaking venture from the family of President Donald Trump. Mark Cuban believes that the real money-making idea behind the Trump Phone might not be the device itself — but what's inside it. After Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump unveiled a new Trump-branded smartphone on Monday, the billionaire investor floated a provocative theory on X. He thinks the $499 gold "T1" phone is likely about making crypto cash. "I think the smart game they are probably playing is to put a crypto wallet on the phone that leverages WLF, $Trump, and their stable coins," Cuban posted in response to the product launch. WLF is a reference to crypto firm World Liberty Financial that's connected with the Trumps. "Whatever transactions they can create generates fees for them, and there are so many way to sell things and pre-load whatever they want," he added. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump launched his own meme coin, $Trump, which soared north of $70 billion at its valuation peak in mid-January. A private dinner for top holders of the coin late last month required an average investment of nearly $1.8 million to attend, NBC News reported. According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the coin's backers, including Trump's family and a network of affiliate companies, have already earned over $350 million in trading fees. Trump Media & Technology Group also filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking approval of a new bitcoin and ether ETF on Monday, with the fund aiming to invest 75% of its assets in bitcoin and 25% in ethereum — increasing the family's entrenchment in crypto. The T1 phone Eric Trump told Fox Business on Monday that the T1 would "revolutionize cellphones," while Trump Jr touted it as a "true value" American-made alternative to mainstream operators at a press conference in New York City. It's unclear who is making the devices. Cuban also said on X: "I just want to know who makes them and where." If Cuban's theory is right, the Trump phone could be a portal to a Trump-branded Web3 ecosystem preloaded with wallets, digital assets, and transaction-generating features. There is no mention on the Trump Mobile website of cryptos. Trump Jr said the venture would offer roadside assistance and telemedicine services as well as wireless coverage and the smartphone.
