A new controversy has started over the phone made by US President Donald Trump’s mobile company, which is advertised as ‘Made in America’.
According to a recent technical review, the phone called ‘Trump Mobile T1’ priced at around $500 is not actually anything new, but a different look of the ‘HTC U24 Pro’ model phone.
Tech news site Engadget reports that the core chipset and internal technologies of the two phones are the same except for some major external changes. Evidence has been found that most of the phone’s components are imported from China and designed there.
The phone collected by NBC News was tested by a popular gadget repair website ‘iFixit’.
In their conclusion, the real difference between the ‘Trump Mobile T1’ and the ‘HTC U24 Pro’ phones is only in two places. The Trump phone’s battery capacity is slightly higher, with 30W charging support instead of 60W and a gorgeous gold color coating on the outside.
Apart from these, the changes in the other two phones are very minor and external. For example, the rear cameras are placed slightly differently and the design of the speaker holes has changed slightly.
The main chipset inside the phone, such as the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor, 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage, is all one. However, the memory board used in the Trump phone is made by the ‘Micron’ company, while the HTC U24 Pro phone uses the memory board of the ‘SK Hynix’ company.
Initially, ‘Trump Mobile’ claimed that their phone was ‘Made in the USA’. But now they’re insisting the device has a ‘pride for Americans’ design. However, the real meaning of this word is not clear.
The company claims that the T1 phone is ‘built on American innovation’ and ‘made with American values in mind’. But no matter how ‘proudly American’ the paper advertises, the phone is definitely not made in the USA.
The current reality is that no manufacturing system has yet been developed to make all of a phone’s machinery or components entirely inside the United States. As a result, Trump Mobile is now changing its tune, saying that their phones are ‘proudly manufactured in the United States’.
Their statement suggests that an in-country team has only assembled about 10 imported components.
The $499 Trump phone battery is made in the Philippines, but most of its parts come from China.
Analyzing all the evidence, iFixit said, “It would have been impossible anywhere else to produce the T1 phone in such small numbers and at exactly the same price as the HTC U24 Pro in the short time that the new brand has been on the market.”
This is only possible when the phone is manufactured in a factory where all the equipment and production systems suitable for this model are ready.
All things considered, iFixit concluded that the Trump T1 is indeed ‘designed and manufactured in China, with almost every component sourced from China’.
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