Where’s the Trump Phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, it turns out we might have two Trump Phones to worry about.
The Trump Phone may be no more than a whisper in the wind, but Trump Mobile is already planning a second. One of the company’s top executives revealed in an interview that a “T1 Ultra” is also in the works, though we know even less about it than we do about the first phone.
The unexpected comments were made by Don Hendrickson, one of the three executives Trump Mobile brought out on stage at the service’s launch, described then as its head of mobile operations. Last November, he spoke to trade publication Wireless Dealer Magazine in an interview that has so far gone largely unnoticed, but ends with a tantalizing tease of the company’s future hardware.
“Our next major step is the launch of the T1 Ultra.”
“We’re focused on evolving with our customers by offering even more powerful tools that fit their lives,” Hendrickson said. “Our next major step is the launch of the T1 Ultra — a premium device that builds on the success of the original T1 with enhanced performance, upgraded features, and the same bold, American-proud design.”
“The T1 Ultra will offer a top-tier user experience while staying true to our mission of combining value, functionality, and patriotic branding. As we expand, expect to see more integrated services, exclusive perks, and new product tiers — always centered around the same promise: delivering more than just wireless and doing it the Trump℠ Mobile way,” he added.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First is the claim to be building on “the success of the original T1,” a phone that is now five months late and counting, sparking Democratic lawmakers to write to the FTC asking it to investigate. Can an unlaunched phone really be a success? I suppose it depends how many $100 deposits the company has taken, though as I reported last week, we still don’t know what that figure looks like.
Unsurprisingly for a phone to be branded “Ultra,” the new handset will apparently have “enhanced performance” and “upgraded features,” though Hendrickson is vague on the details. The original T1 promises budget specs at a midrange price — though we still don’t know some core elements like what chipset it uses — so there’s plenty of room for an Ultra to improve on it.
The name, of course, echoes Samsung’s Galaxy S Ultra line, though similar branding has been adopted by the likes of Xiaomi, Vivo, Asus (RIP), Oppo, and Honor. For the most part, those phones feature the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chips, triple or quadruple rear cameras with advanced telephoto lenses, and cost north of $1,000. Anything similar would be a big jump from the $499 T1 Phone, though the promise of “new product tiers” suggests an ambition to hit other price points in the future too.
Then there’s the manufacturing. Having learned from Trump Mobile’s initial made-in-America walk back, Hendrickson only says the T1 Ultra will have “American-proud design,” the same wording currently used to describe the T1. We’ve yet to find out what exactly that means, or precisely how gold we should expect the T1 Ultra to be. Can American-proud design compete with the Chinese retail giant JD.com, apparently about to start selling pure gold iPhone cases for up to $16,000?
Still, there’s reason to doubt in the T1 Ultra, beyond the obvious. Hendrickson claims that “customers are drawn to… the exclusive T1 Ultra phone,” and “eager to buy into” it, an impossibility for a phone that hadn’t even been mentioned publicly before this interview was published. Were the T1 and the T1 Ultra getting muddled together, or was this a prewritten interview intended to go live after a full Ultra announcement that never took place?
“Delivering more than just wireless, and doing it the Trump℠ Mobile way.”
The Ultra isn’t the only interesting tidbit in Hendrickson’s interview. He also claims to have been the originator of the Trump Mobile idea, claiming he “approached [the Trumps] with the concept,” because “they know how to build movements, not just businesses.” So now we know who to thank for all this.
And if you’re wondering about the curious “Trump℠,” which you might have seen pop up before in places like the Trump Mobile website small print, it’s the symbol for a service mark — a variant on the trademark used for services, rather than physical products, and which indicates that the Trump trademark for the mobile industry has been applied for, but not yet approved. It’s yet another element of Trump Mobile that’s still more fiction than fact.
As ever, Trump Mobile didn’t reply to my request for comment.
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