After months of hangups, Trump Mobile said it will start shipping out its Trump-branded gold phone this week.
The $499 T1 device will start to go out for people who placed preorders, the company said Wednesday in a social media post that included a video showcasing the gold-colored smartphone.
The phone featuring an American flag printed on its back is designed for “real American value” and “unlike many modern flagship devices,” it features a 3.5 mm headphone jack, according to the video.
Some reviews of the phone, based on limited information shared online, have compared its specifications to the T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5G, which is manufactured in China and retails for around $128 at Amazon and Walmart.
Like T1, that phone features a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
Trump Mobile first launched in June but pushed the release of its T1 phone back to October and then to later this week after delays in development and testing, Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien told Reuters in a statement this week.
The Android devices initially were advertised as being designed and manufactured in the U.S., but that description was later changed to “eventually” made in the U.S.
O’Brien told Reuters that the phones are currently “assembled in the U.S.” and that in the future the company hopes to release a product that has most of its components made domestically.
Tinglong Dai, a global supply chain expert at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, previously explained to JS that it would be impossible for a phone like this to be manufactured in the U.S. today and that it would take a “lot of heavy lifting” to change that.
That’s because the U.S. currently “lacks the infrastructure to manufacture key smartphone components such as display panels, memory chips and camera modules, which are almost entirely produced in Asia,” he said.
An expert consumer analyst also wagered to JS that Trump Mobile users won’t exceed 100,000 accounts, raising the question of whether achieving that manufacturing goal would be worth it.