Is the Trump T1 Just an HTC Phone Painted Gold?

CNET's review of the Trump phone found much the same thing as iFixit: It's likely a reskinned HTC phone from two years ago.

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor

Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.

I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.

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The Trump phone has been making headlines again over the past week, after iFixit tore it down and found it was nearly identical to the HTC U24 Pro, a Taiwanese phone released in mid-2024. I reviewed the T1 phone last month, and while it worked fine as a middle-of-the-road phone, we do have some relevant insights here.

iFixit's findings match up with CNET's benchmark testing, first of all, which also suggested a very close matchup with the HTC phone:

The Trump phone's Geekbench results put it on par with the HTC U24 Pro 5G and also show that it has an eight-core processor, which could be the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 released in November 2023 -- Trump Mobile doesn't specify.

The specs of the Trump phone that we know also mirror the HTC phone. According to the Trump Mobile website, the T1 phone has these specs:

6.78-inch AMOLED screen

50-megapixel wide-angle camera

8-megapixel ultrawide camera

50-megapixel 2x telephoto camera

50-megapixel front-facing camera

5,000-mAh battery

Unnamed Qualcomm Snapdragon chip

These are the HTC U24 Pro's specs:

6.78-inch AMOLED screen

50-megapixel wide-angle camera

8-megapixel ultrawide camera

50-megapixel 2x telephoto camera

50-megapixel front-facing camera

4,600-mAh battery

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset

What (and where) is the Trump phone?

The PR firm working with Trump Mobile, which expedited the delivery of CNET's Trump phone last month, told me on Wednesday that it is no longer working with the company. The Trump Organization and Trump Mobile haven't responded to my requests for comment, including when the phones will actually ship to all the customers who paid a $100 deposit to preorder one. It appears that only a handful of people have received their phones, and most are media.

CNET received a Trump phone, NBC News got one, Bloomberg got one and, most recently, Snazzy Labs received a T1 in the last week, a month after the phones were supposedly being shipped out to customers. I've scoured the internet looking for actual customers who have received the phone -- according to The Guardian, more than 27,000 people put down a $100 deposit -- but can only find disgruntled, phone-less people.

Snazzy Labs uploaded a very thorough YouTube video last week, also tearing down the phone to find much the same thing: Aside from the greater battery capacity in the Trump phone, and a custom back cover, Snazzy Labs shows the phone's interiors and exterior are identical to the HTC phone.

"The resemblance between these two phones is uncanny," he says in the video.

When Trump Mobile launched in June 2025 with a $47.45-a-month mobile phone plan, it initially announced that a Trump phone would be made in the US and launch in August 2025. But when it became obvious that domestic large-scale smartphone manufacturing was not possible, Trump Mobile dropped the "made in the US" claim.

In mid-April, a redesigned Trump Mobile website showcased a new-look T1 phone, its third redesign. Among other things, one of my criticisms when I tested that phone was the lack of information about it, including not knowing where it was made or who made it.

Nowhere on the phone's packaging, manual, website or the device itself does it say which country it was manufactured in. The box says it was "assembled in the USA," but we don't know to what extent -- whether the parts were all put together in the US, or if the phone was just put in its packaging.

"The only place the T1 could have been made in the very short time the brand has existed, in the limited quantities it's being produced, and at the same price as the U24 Pro, is at the factories with preexisting tooling and production lines for this phone," iFixit concluded after scanning and tearing apart the phone, suggesting that it was likely manufactured in Guangdong, China.

Perhaps the "assembled in the USA" statement is similar to its "shipping this week" statement: true for one or two parts and customers.

The T1 Trump Phone Is the Same Color as Scrooge McDuck's Gold Coins

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CORINNE REICHERT

Senior Editor

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