The $500 device has received a gag-inducing comparison.
The long-delayed golden Trump Mobile phone looks nothing like the advertised image, has a smaller screen than promised, and its color leaves a lot to be desired, according to one of the few people to lay eyes on a real one.
The $500 Trump phone has now been delivered to tech media for review, one year after it was announced and nine months after its hard launch to cash-rich MAGA diehards.
Not only is the screen smaller than expected, but the phone is also not made in America as promised, Patrick Holland, the managing editor of tech site CNET, told CNN. Rather, Holland added, the packaging says the phone is “designed with American values in mind.”
Holland reviewed the phone on CNN on Monday after spending the day testing it, and the news was not good for customers.
Holland says the actual product looks “nothing like the original image” from last year, which he said resembled an “altered iPhone 16 Pro.”
The tech expert ripped into the phone’s selling point, criticizing the “gold” coloring in honor of Trump’s favorite thing.
“Sometimes it looks like those gold coins that Scrooge McDuck would jump into for DuckTales,” Holland said of the Disney character bathing in his riches.
“Other times, it’s got a mustard vibe to it, and yet other times, it kind of looks like a urine sample.”
The CNET unboxing video also reveals that the American flag etched into the phone has 11 stripes, instead of 13. It comes with an old-school headphone jack and has Truth Social pre-installed. The camera also automatically filters selfies.
Holland said he would not recommend the phone to customers due to the unknown technical construction of the $500 item.
“We don‘t know what the processor is in the phone. We don‘t know what the software and security updates will be,” Holland said
He also said he has a “big worry” about whether the Trump Phone will actually ship to people who paid for it.
“While a couple of us in the media do have it, I can‘t find many cases of actual customers who put their money down to order the phone with the phone.”
