Who Makes The Trump T1 Phone, And Where Is It Manufactured?

Politics aside, the family of a sitting U.S. president announcing a premium phone with a tagline of "proudly American" did turn heads, but not in a good way. Months of delays and a $100 deposit made the product seem borderline scammy, especially after Trump Mobile changed the fine print out of the blue, which made it seem like delivering the product was optional. Once the Trump T1 phones arrived, the reactions ranged from negative to puzzled.

Though the website promised "American innovation" and a device highlighting "care and precision," it performed as well as you'd expect a $499 phone to perform. That wasn't the big issue, though. Everyone started asking who makes the Trump T1 phone, and because the website says nothing of substance about the processor ("Snapdragon® Mobile Platform" isn't very precise), the T1's inner workings remained a mystery. Many reviewers quickly noticed a striking resemblance to the HTC U24, and a later teardown by iFixit confirmed that it's indeed a reskinned version of the 2024 Taiwanese smartphone. This means that the device promoting "American values" is likely produced in China.

You're probably more familiar with HTC's VR gadgets, such as the HTC Vive Focus Vision, so no shame if you had no idea that the company makes phones. For reference, HTC was once a popular Android-focused Taiwan-based brand that fell hard behind its competition, likely due to a deadly combo of misaligned marketing and a failure to pivot to the growing trend of large screens. Today, the company assembles its devices in Taiwan with a small catch: HTC not only sources parts from China, but there's also a possibility that the company is manufacturing some of its devices outside of its Taiwanese production facility.

Considering that the DNA of the Trump T1 is HTC U24 Pro and that the original came out of China, chances are that this gold-tinged reskin follows the same blueprint. It would be a logical approach, after all. The factory already has all the building blocks and production lines in place, so Occam's razor points to the Trump T1 being made in Guangdong, China — American values, indeed.

The teardown didn't just end the mystery of who makes the Trump T1, but also clarified everything about the controversial phone's inner workings. Save for tiny differences like the position of the flash and the multichip package, the phones are identical. Considering the good people at iFixit already tore down one HTC U24 Pro, they likely experienced heavy déjà vu.

For starters, the screens are a pixel-for-pixel match, and the mainboard is basically a clone. Naturally, since the boards are cut from the same cloth, the processor in the Trump T1 was quickly identified as a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Funny enough, the "teardown crew" also swapped the boards between the devices and learned that they're interchangeable.

In the end, the Trump T1, despite the lack of innovation, is technically better than its older brother on two fronts: the price and the battery. The former sports a 5,000 mAh battery, while the latter has a rated capacity of 4,600 mAh. The presidential smartphone is also about $100 cheaper than the HTC U24 Pro, so technically, it's not really something you can call a complete rip-off. Is it worth it? Probably not. There are affordable, high-quality Android phones that offer better specs without any of the added political baggage.