The Trump Mobile T1 really is an HTC phone from 2024, teardown shows

Since the Trump Mobile T1 first landed in the hands of media outlets last month, observers have noted that the phone bears a striking resemblance to 2024’s HTC U24 Pro. Now, thanks to a full teardown, we’ve seen that it pretty much is, but with a couple of small differences.

The folks at iFixit got their hands on NBC’s media sample Trump Phone, took it apart, and thoroughly documented the process. Internally, the T1 is essentially identical to the U24 Pro, featuring all the same components in the same spots. The biggest change is that Trump Mobile’s version comes with a different battery, which is marked as 5,000 mAh to the original’s 4,600, but also charges slower, with a 30-watt ceiling compared to the U24’s 60-watt limit.

Other differences are cosmetic. The T1’s camera flash was moved to a different spot in the phone’s customized camera housing, and the modified design’s speaker grille is seven small, circular openings, rather than the six pill-shaped openings on the U24 Pro proper.

Everything else, including the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, 12 gigs of RAM, and 512 gigs of storage, is the same across both phones (though iFixit notes the T1’s memory is from Micron while the U24 Pro’s came from SK Hynix). For good measure, iFixit even popped the U24’s mainboard into the T1’s body and booted it up.

That an MVNO is selling a lightly modified, Trump-branded version of an HTC phone from 2024 is obviously pretty strange. iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari speculates that HTC either sold the rights to the U24 Pro’s hardware design to Trump Mobile or that HTC didn’t own the rights in the first place, and that Trump Mobile contracted a factory in China that was already set up to produce the U24 Pro to produce a limited quantity of customized units.

Trump Mobile said the T1 was starting to ship to customers last month. As of writing, the phone is still listed as available for pre-order with a $100 deposit on Trump Mobile’s website.