Technologies

The Trump Phone Will Cost You $499. This Is What You Get and What We Don’t Know Yet

The president’s son Eric says the phone will be made in the US «eventually.»

The Trump Organization now has a wireless business, including a mobile phone plan and a $499 gold-hued phone.

On Monday, Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of US President Donald Trump, announced a new wireless venture centered on a service called Trump Mobile. According to the venture’s website, a wireless plan is available for $47.45 a month with unlimited talk, text and data and no long-term contract. The price of the service is a callout to Donald Trump’s two terms as president: 47 for his current presidency and 45 for his previous one, from 2017 to 2021. Those interested can use their own phone and number.

Trump Mobile is offering that $499 phone, called the T1, for preorder ahead of planned availability in September. It comes with a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen and runs the Android 15 operating system.

The Trump family licensed its name to the service.

The idea for a wireless service promoted around a celebrity or a brand may be an emerging trend. Just a week before the Trump Organization announcement, the popular SmartLess podcast launched its own service. The podcast is hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes.

Will the phone be made in the US or elsewhere?

In a statement about the service and new phone, the Trump Organization says it will offer customer support through call centers based in the US. The T1 phone is described as «designed and built in the United States.»

The statement doesn’t offer any additional details about sourcing for the phone’s manufacturing, but given supply chain realities, it’s likely that at least some components in the phone would come from another country, such as China. The Trump administration has been focused on having more manufacturing take place in the US, including pushing Apple to build iPhones here.

Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at International Data Corp., told CNBC on Tuesday that the phone could not be assembled or completely manufactured in the US. «That is completely impossible,» he said.

Eric Trump, the president’s younger son, said on Tuesday that the company will build phones in the US, but not right away.

«Eventually, all the phones can be built in the United States of America,» he said in an interview cited by Wired magazine.

President Trump has said he will impose a 25% tariff on all smartphones not made in the US, which would seem to include his own family’s proposed phone.

In addition to voice and data service, the Trump Mobile plan includes 24/7 roadside assistance through Drive America, telehealth and mental health support services, no credit check and free international calling to 100 countries, «including many with American military bases to help honor the families who are bravely serving in our military abroad.»

The wireless plan

Trump Mobile says the service will run using the networks of the three major US wireless carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. To be more precise, it’s powered by Liberty Wireless Mobile, an MVNO — mobile virtual network operators don’t own the infrastructure but instead lease it from the big wireless providers and then resell it in their own packages.

As CNET’s Patrick Holland and Jeff Carlson point out, there are hundreds of US-based MVNOs for you to choose from, including Liberty Wireless, which offers its own $40-a-month plan. Right now, they say, there are still «too many unknowns» about the Trump Mobile plan to allow for a definitive assessment. Check out their breakdown of how Trump Mobile compares to some of the top alternatives.

Some details are confusing

CNET senior editor Mike Sorrentino noted that the site for the Trump phone went live with numerous errors and omissions.

It doesn’t list a processor, even under the headline marked «processor.» The storage and memory specs are mixed up, listing the RAM as 12GB of storage and the memory as 256GB of internal storage. The site mentions a «punch-hole AMOLED display,» which Sorrentino notes does not exist, using the term to refer to the space for the front-facing camera. Two separate sizes are given for the phone display. The site references a «5,000mAh long life camera,» but it appears to mean the battery. The battery-camera confusion has been corrected.

Meanwhile, the press release for the phone says it will be released in August, but the website says September.

Gulf of Mexico label on the map

The Trump Mobile site launched with a map showing its coverage area, but that map was pulled after people online noticed that the map used the name Gulf of Mexico for the body of water Trump calls the Gulf of America.

Reuters reviewed the website code and noted that the site seemed to be using T-Mobile’s network data for the coverage map, and that company uses the Gulf of Mexico name.

Trump announced the Gulf of America name change on his Inauguration Day in January. He also changed the name of the Alaskan mountain Denali to Mount McKinley. The Associated Press has said it will not use the Gulf of America name for the body of water.

A phone with a telehealth plan?

The press release promises the phone plan comes with «telehealth services, including virtual medical care, mental health support, and easy ordering and delivery for prescription medications.»

Don Hendrickson, a spokesperson for Trump Mobile, confirmed at the launch, saying the telehealth services were all included in the plan. As the New York Times notes, it’s not clear how a $47-a-month phone plan could afford to cover remote doctor visits and medication.

The Trump Mobile site says the telehealth program will require users to sign up with a third-party provider, Doctegrity.

The celebrity phone trend

The new offerings from Trump Mobile may receive a lot of publicity due to the president’s high profile and social media presence, but one wireless executive said they’re unlikely to create a major disruption for other wireless carriers.

«The US wireless market is over $300 billion a year, and it is not a zero-sum game. New entrants like Trump Mobile or SmartLess typically operate as mobile virtual network operators using infrastructure from the big three,» said US Mobile CEO Ahmed Khattak. Khattak’s company has served a million wireless customers and has ranked high among the wireless phone plans CNET has rated.

«They might carve out a niche based on branding or audience loyalty, but that doesn’t fundamentally change the economics or scale advantages of larger MVNOs or the big three carriers,» he says.

Khattak doesn’t believe the new Trump endeavor is a conflict of interest or presents a regulatory conflict because the president has the authority to appoint FCC commissioners.

«The FCC is an independent agency,» he says. «Commissioners are appointed by the president but confirmed by the Senate, and the FCC does not get involved in MVNO business agreements or commercial launches.»

The US Mobile CEO also doesn’t believe that the new company represents a new wave of celebrity wireless endorsements.

«If anything, that era is behind us,» he says. «Mint Mobile is often seen as a Ryan Reynolds story, but the reality is that its parent company, Ultra Mobile, was already the fastest-growing private company in America long before he joined.»

Khattak added: «Most celebrity MVNOs do not last because wireless is an operationally intense business with tight margins. This is not the next celebrity tequila or podcast trend.»

From Trump phones to Instant Pots, snow globes

The president did not appear for the Monday announcement at New York’s Trump Tower; his sons headed up publicity for the unveiling.

The Trump Organization is a holding company for the president’s business interests. According to Reuters, the president has reported $600 million worth of income from various deals and projects, including crypto coins, a sector of business his administration has been bullish on.

Recently, the news site Semafor reported that kitchen appliance company Instant Pot will offer a «45/47 Collaboration,» marking items with those numbers and the president’s «Make America Great Again» slogan. Semafor also reported that tableware and china company Lenox has proposed a line of Trump-related product, including snow globes and dinnerware with the president’s face.

Technologies

Tips to Extend Your Phone’s Battery Life

Technologies

AT&T’s $177 Million Settlement Will Pay Victims of Two Huge Data Breaches. Learn Who Qualifies

If your data was leaked in two massive AT&T data breaches, you could be eligible for a payout.

Of the 1,350,835,988 notices sent to subjects of data breaches in 2024, almost a tenth of those came from a hack of AT&T servers in April, according to to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s 2024 Annual Data Breach Report. The telecom giant now plans to settle a lawsuit for that breach and another in 2019 for a whopping $177 million.

On Friday, June 20, US District Judge Ada Brown granted preliminary approval to the terms of a proposed settlement from AT&T that would resolve two lawsuits related to the data breaches. The current settlement would see AT&T pay $177 million to customers adversely affected by at least one of the two data breaches.

The settlement will prioritize larger payments to customers who suffered damages that are «fairly traceable» to the data leaks. It will also provide bigger payments to those impacted by the larger of the two leaks, which began in 2019. While the company is working toward a settlement, it has continued to deny that it was «responsible for these criminal acts.»

For all the details we have about the settlement right now, keep reading, and for more info about other recent settlements, find out how to claim Apple’s Siri privacy settlement and see if you’re eligible for 23andMe’s privacy breach settlement.

What happened with these AT&T data breaches?

AT&T confirmed the two data breaches last year, announcing an investigation into the first in March before confirming it in May and confirming the second in July.

The first of the confirmed breaches began in 2019. The company revealed that about 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders had their data exposed to hackers, including names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The company first began investigating the situation last year after it reported that customer data had appeared on the dark web.

The second breach began in April of 2024, when a hacker broke into AT&T cloud storage provider Snowflake and accessed 2022 call and text records for almost all of the company’s US customers, about 109 million in all. The company stressed that no names were attached to the stolen data. Two individuals were arrested in connection with the breach.

Both of these incidents sparked a wave of class action lawsuits alleging corporate neglect on the part of AT&T in failing to sufficiently protect its customers.

How will I know if I’m eligible for the AT&T data breach settlement?

As of now, we know that the settlement will pay out to any current or former AT&T customer whose data was accessed in one of these data breaches, with higher payments reserved for those who can provide documented proof that they suffered damages directly resulting from their data being stolen.

If you’re eligible, you should receive a notice about it, either by email or a physical letter in the mail, sometime in the coming months. The company expects that the claims process will begin on Aug. 4, 2025.

How much will the AT&T data breach payments be?

You’ll have to «reasonably» prove damages caused by these data breaches to be eligible for the highest and most prioritized payouts. For the 2019 breach, those claimants can receive up to $5,000. For the Snowflake breach, the max payout will be $2,500. It’s not clear at this time how the company might be handling customers who’ve been affected by both breaches.

AT&T will focus on making those payments first, and whatever’s left of the $177 million settlement total will be disbursed to anyone whose data was accessed, even without proof of damages. Because these payouts depend on how many people get the higher amounts first, we can’t say definitively how much they will be.

When could I get paid from the AT&T data breach settlement?

AT&T expects that payments will start to go out sometime in early 2026. Exact dates aren’t available right now. The recent court order approving the settlement lists a notification schedule of Aug. 4 to Oct. 17, 2025.

The deadline for submitting a claim is currently set at Nov. 18, 2025. The final approval of the settlement needs to be given at a Dec. 3, 2025, court hearing in order for payments to begin.

Stay tuned to this piece in the coming months to get all the new details as they emerge.

For more money help, check out CNET’s daily tariff price impact tracker.

Technologies

RFK Jr. Announces All Americans Need Health Tracking Devices: Here Are the Pros and Cons

The US Health Secretary plans a huge campaign to encourage health wearables: CNET knows exactly the kind of devices he’s talking about, and why accuracy may be a problem.

Many Americans already track health statistics like heart rate and sleep cycles on app-connected accessories. Now the federal government wants to jump in. On June 24, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced «one of the largest HHS campaigns in history» to encourage the use of wearables to track health conditions, a trend CNET has recently covered.

Kennedy is referring to the many different bands, watches and even clothes that use technology to track human vital signs. CNET’s reviewers have spent years testing devices like these, seeing how rings monitor health signs, straps track your heart health and the right devices lead to better sleep.

The latest version of the Apple Watch, for example, has sensors designed to detect heart rate, heart rhythm issues, falls, sleep health, sleep apnea, temperature, breathing rate and more. The newest Oura Ring can track sleep patterns, menstrual cycles, temperature, heart rate and other health details.

«We think that wearables are a key to the MAHA agenda, Making America Healthy Again ,» Kennedy told the Subcommittee on Health during its budget meeting. «My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years … they can see what food is doing to their glucose levels, their heart rates and a number of other metrics as they eat it.»

Kennedy also tweeted that «wearables put the power of health back in the hands of the American people.»

«Wearables,» however, is a broad term encompassing everything from fitness devices that count steps to sleep trackers you wear at night. And consumer devices can’t easily replace monitoring solutions offered by medical professionals.

For example, CNET has covered research indicating that even the best-in-class Apple Watch struggles with accuracy from metrics like steps to heart rate. Another study from California State Polytechnic University has shown that fitness-related Fitbit trackers show high inaccuracies as well. In fact, that research was used in a related Fitbit lawsuit.

Speaking of glucose monitors, Kennedy isn’t the only White House official with an interest in such health sensors. The administration’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, co-founded glucose-monitoring company Levels and sells a monitoring app as well as other wellness products.

Finally, CNET wellness experts remind everyone that wearables aren’t always a good fit. Those suffering from eating disorders or body image issues should always talk to an expert before using wearables, as they can exacerbate certain issues or lead to a unhelpful outlook.

The US Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.