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The Trump Phone Will Cost You $499. Here’s 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 called the T1.

On Monday, Donald Trump Jr., 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.

The Trump family licensed its name to the service. Its phone is only available for Android users, not users of Apple iPhones.

Trump Mobile is offering that $499 phone, called the T1, for preorder ahead of planned availability in September. It comes a  with a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen and runs the Android 15 operating system. The company says the service will run using the networks of the three major US wireless carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

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 phone be made in US or elsewhere?

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

The press release 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.

Commentary: Trump Mobile and the T1 Phone Don’t Make Any Sense, Even for Trump Fans

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.»

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 does not list a processor, even under a 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 appears to mean the battery. The battery-camera confusion has been corrected.

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

Gulf of Mexico label on 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.

A Reuters review of the website’s code shows Trump Mobile appears to have used T-Mobile’s network data for its coverage map. The telecom operator’s coverage map labels the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump announced the Gulf of America name change on his Inauguration Day in January, also changing 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 plans 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 that 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 third-party provider, Doctegrity.

Late to 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 does not 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 Trump 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 glboes and dinnerware with the president’s face.

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Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
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Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
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Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.

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