I’ve got bad news if you’ve been impatiently awaiting the release of the Trump Mobile T1: it looks like the gold-tinted, bargain basement smartphone with “American values” is running late. It was initially meant to launch in September, but with only a few hours of the month left, that’s looking increasingly unlikely.
The T1 was announced in June, along with the launch of Trump Mobile’s $47.45 monthly service plan. The release date was always a little unclear — the Trump Organization’s press release promised the phone would arrive in August, while the Trump Mobile website claimed September — but either way, it hasn’t happened. That means any buyers who actually stumped up the $100 deposit for the hardware still have nothing to show for it.
We’ve known this was coming for a while. Within weeks of the phone’s announcement, the Trump Mobile website was quietly updated to remove mentions of that September release — the phone’s store page now promises it will arrive “later this year.” The Trump Organization didn’t respond to our request for comment on the reason for the delay or when the phone is expected to arrive.
The launch date isn’t the only detail about the phone that’s changed. The T1 is now supposed to have a 6.25-inch screen rather than 6.78-inch, and the spec sheet no longer features the confusing, but strangely endearing, promise of a “5000mAh long life camera.” Despite the smaller size, the low quality render above remains our only glimpse yet of the T1’s design outside a few ads featuring badly edited images of iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones.
Crucially, Trump Mobile also no longer claims the T1 is made in the USA. Instead, it carefully suggests there are “American hands behind every device,” and that it was “designed with American values in mind.”
The T1 Phone will cost $499 when — or if — it arrives later this year.
