The Trump phone sure looks a lot like this HTC phone

Where is Trump’s phone? We will continue to talk about it every week. We reached out as usual to ask about the whereabouts of Trump’s phone, and received no response. This week, thanks to a reader tip, we think we’ve found the original phone the T1 is based on.

Long ago, when Trump’s phone was just one inaccurate demo and a contradictory spec sheet, we… I tried to find out what other phone it might be based on. Now, eight months, two spec overhauls, and one redesign later, I have a good guess: the HTC U24 Pro.

I didn’t notice this myself. A reader first told me about the similarities between the U24 Pro and Trump’s phone I revealed it a few weeks agoThere are many: a similarly angled body and curved screen, a unique front-facing sensor array, and broadly similar specs, including oddities like a headphone jack and microSD card support.

Let’s get one thing straight up top: I’m pretty sure HTC isn’t secretly building the Trump Phone. Sohaib Ahmed, the company’s global director of public relations, told me that HTC does not design or manufacture phones for third parties. But this does not rule out that another company played a role in designing or building both phones, and given how similar they are, I think that is exactly what happened.

The U24 Pro is a strange phone in itself. He – she It was launched in 2024 For 549 euros (about $600 at the time), it was heralded in some corners as a return from the dead for HTC, despite the fact that it followed the U23 Pro a year earlier, and a series of smaller versions aimed at the Asian market. HTC, once one of the major players in the Android phone industry, has dwindled significantly since then Selling a significant portion of its smartphone business to Google Compared to $1.1 billion in 2017

The T1 and U24 Pro both share a slightly asymmetrical, angular frame, jutting out at a point along each edge, with a sharply curved display on the front. I can’t think of or find another phone that looks exactly the same — even small details like the placement of the antenna lines around the power and volume buttons. Even more telling is the array of sensors on the top of each phone. The U24 Pro splits the speaker grille, notification light, and proximity sensor into three, resulting in an unusual design with a long strip, a small LED dot, and then a second, shorter strip, at the point where the screen meets the top of the phone. What looks like the same sensor design can clearly be seen on the Trump phone I was shown, though I can’t confirm that the sensors themselves are the same, or that the T1 will also have a notification LED.

Other details are more subtle. It’s hard to tell exactly from the glimpses I’ve gotten of the Trump phone, but along the top bezel it certainly looks like it has a headphone and microphone jack in exactly the same positions as on the HTC device. Even having a headphone jack in the first place is a testament to the phones’ connectivity, given how rare this feature is in modern devices. The same can be said for the fact that both phones include a microSD card slot, sharing support for cards up to 1TB as well as 512GB of base storage.

While the rear cameras look completely different, which seems to ruin my theory, look again: the U24 Pro’s cameras are split into a pair close together, with a third lens at the bottom. Trump’s new phone puts all of its cameras in one place, but they are spaced unevenly, with a larger gap between the second and third lenses. These cameras may look very different on the surface, but I suspect you’ll find they’re similar underneath. And what we know about the identical specs, too: Trump Mobile told me its phone will have 50-megapixel sensors for both its main and selfie cameras, and a glimpse of its camera UI showed an ultra-wide and 2x zoom option – all of which you’ll find on the U24 Pro.

Assuming the two phones are basically the same, does the U24 Pro tell us more about what to expect from the T1? It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor, which matches what I’ve been told about the Snapdragon 7-series chip in the Trump phone. The U24 Pro has a 6.8-inch OLED display, 60W wired charging, support for wireless charging, and an IP67 rating for protection against dust and water. There’s reason to be extra careful in reading the spec sheet, though: The U24 Pro was released with a 4,600 mAh battery, which is smaller than the 5,000 mAh capacity I’m told will be in the Trump phone. If these specifications differ, other internal elements may differ as well – a larger battery in particular may replace HTC’s wireless charging coils.

The U24 Pro launched to average reviews, which may not inspire much confidence in Trump Mobile’s offerings. Technical advisor He gave the phone two and a half stars out of five, calling it “difficult to recommend over competitors.” Examine the notebook He declared it “modern and outdated.” However, it performed surprisingly well in JerryRigEverything’s disassembly and durability test.

However, he did note that this doesn’t feel like the old HTC phone, as it lacks the sapphire crystal that HTC previously used on its displays and the optical image stabilization on the front camera that it once pioneered. The U24 Pro and other HTC phones released in the past few years share little consistent design language, and ship with near-stock Android software. Speculation has been rife that HTC is not actually manufacturing the phones in-house, but has commissioned an ODM – original design manufacturer – to produce the devices. Original design manufacturers (ODMs) design and manufacture phones for other companies, usually according to a set of specifications provided by consumer-facing brands, and they often retain ownership of the designs, allowing them to reuse and repurpose them for other customers. I asked for clarification from HTC, but the company has not confirmed whether the U24 Pro was manufactured in-house or outsourced.

It’s certainly possible that Trump Mobile, or its manufacturing partner, is simply copying the design of an unknown HTC device. But I think the most likely answer here is a more mundane one: HTC may have worked with some unnamed ODM to design and manufacture the U24 Pro, and Trump Mobile just happens to be working with the same company. This manufacturer may have mined its old HTC designs when developing the T1, or may have given new life to old, unused components from HTC’s production process. Without knowing the default design in question, it’s hard to say for sure. Trump Mobile has previously confirmed that it is working with a partner or partners to manufacture its phones outside the US, before “final assembly” in Miami, but CEO Don Hendrickson would not tell me the name of its manufacturer or where it is based. I reached out to the company again for comment on this story, but did not hear back.

So no, I don’t think HTC made Trump’s phone. But it seems likely that it is based, in one way or another, on one of that company’s phones. It remains to be seen how the T1 Phone will differ in its details, but the fact that its origins seem closely tied to an unpopular mid-range phone from a couple of years ago doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the T1 Phone’s flagship credentials.

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