One of the first things people noticed when the long-delayed Trump Mobile T1 phone started arriving in reviewers’ hands was that it looked a lot like an existing HTC phone. Now, iFixit — the folks who disassemble a wide variety of popular gadgets in service of offering their own DIY repair kits — have the receipts. The organization’s teardown of the Trump T1 unit obtained by NBC News show that it’s nearly a clone of the HTC U24 Pro. While it isn’t exactly the same, the differences are mostly cosmetic, along with a couple of components from alternative vendors.
Before cracking into the device, iFixit put it under a CT scanner and compared it to a scan of the HTC U24 Pro, finding that they look nearly identical. Once inside, they confirmed that the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor and other internals are the same as well.
The T1 does differ in a handful of areas, though. It has a slightly larger battery on board, and it has a different pattern for the speaker holes. The storage and RAM on the T1 is supplied by Micron while the U24 Pro version is made by SK Hynix. The T1’s camera flash is also in a slightly different position, owing to a lengthened flex cable. Otherwise, it’s the same basic hardware, just with the signature gold paint job. The two are so similar, in fact, that iFixit was able to run the HTC board inside of the T1 body, and it worked without a hitch.
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The big question about the T1 is where it’s manufactured, considering it was originally pitched as being made in America before that language was quietly removed from its website. The box for the phone says that it’s “proudly assembled in the USA.” The iFixit team says it’s possible Trump Mobile is importing the chassis and display as a preassembled unit, then adding the other components in the U.S.
Trump Mobile didn’t respond to our request for comment.
