Happy birthday to the Trump phone

From the day it was announced, on June 16th, 2025, the Trump phone sounded ridiculous. The T1 Phone 8002 (gold version), as it was officially called, was a combination of contradictory specs, product images that were clearly not photographs of a real phone, and the worrying requirement of a $100 deposit to secure a preorder of a $499 phone with no release date. But none of Trump Mobile’s outlandish announcements were as bold as the claim that the phone would be “designed and built in the United States.” The US has next to no phone manufacturing infrastructure, few engineers with the required expertise, and little of the affordable, flexible mass labor that makes building electronics possible at scale in China, India, and across southeast Asia. Only one company currently makes a phone in the US, the Purism Liberty Phone, and it costs $1,999. The idea that Trump Mobile could build a phone for a quarter of the price in three months or less sounded impossible. A year later, that’s proven to be true. The phone has changed form and shape so many times that I’ve had trouble keeping track of it — and I was keeping track of it, checking…