Trump T1 Phone is a facelifted 2024 HTC U24 Pro

rrickdeckard about 4 hours ago 5 commentsRead Article on ifixit.com

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rickdeckard•about 4 hours ago

> While the SoC is the same, the multichip package housing 12GB LPDDR5 and 512GB storage is from Micron, whereas our HTC U24 Pro uses a package from SK Hynix. A relatively small difference, the change may have occurred due to supply chain limitations, tariff fee considerations, or any number of other benign reasons.

It's most likely that Micron was also the second supplier for the HTC U24 RAM/Storage, and was barely/not used due to ultimately low demand of the U24 (estimations are that only ~10k units were sold globally, which is even below a typical minimum contract volume for semiconductor supply).

(Supply-chain management for volume-produced electronics involves secondary suppliers for expensive/time-critical components, to de-risk supply during the lifecycle of the product or decouple different regions)

Assuming that's the case also here, the ODM manufacturer (I assume it's not HTC) just exercised good supply-chain management by tapping into the previously contracted supply of Micron components to produce the T1.

If Micron was already listed as secondary supplier for the U24, they can probably even reuse the certificates and conformance testing results, which saves money for FCC, R&TTE, GCF compliance-testing by only submitting brief sanity-check results...

rickdeckard•about 4 hours ago

> The claim is that the phone is being assembled from around 10 components by a team in Florida. This battery could be one of those components, along with the camera modules, speakers, the USB-C module, the haptic engine, and the mainboard. If that is indeed what’s happening, I’d wager that the chassis and display are imported as a pre-assembled unit owing to the difficulty of installing curved glass displays.

I wouldn't be surprised if the "final assembly" in US is just to apply the battery (which is not from china), associated ribbon-cables and NFC-Antenna on top of it, and the custom back-cover. With some creative phrasing you can count that as "10 components".

Also, the final assembly in US surely also helped on import tax duties, as only "components" were imported from different sources instead of a final commercial product...

rickdeckard•about 4 hours ago

> So far HTC has been mostly silent on the existence of the T1. That might mean that they either sold the rights to the design of the U24 Pro to Trump Mobile, or (in my opinion the more likely scenario) they never owned the rights to the design in the first place.

Typical ODM-supply contracts define some exclusivity for the lifecycle of the product, depending on the agreement it may be (combinations of)

1.) Full exclusivity (ODM provides exclusivity for the design, spec AND the PCB)

2.) Spec. exclusivity (ODM provides exclusivity for the specification-combo of SoC, display, battery, camera),

3.) Design exclusivity (ODM provides a custom exterior design of the device

Usually such exclusivity agreements are made for a span of 2-3 years from agreed launch-date (with parts having the printed customer-name, i.e. "HTC" covered separately).

The HTC U24 Pro was apparently publicly launched on June 12th 2026, which will be exactly 2 years TOMORROW (!)

--> HTC likely had a 2-year spec/design exclusivity which either expires on June 12th 2026

--> (or was already agreed to be waived based on HTC possibly not reaching the total production-volume agreed with the ODM)

rickdeckard•about 3 hours ago

> Given that fact, the only place the T1 could have been made in the very short time the brand has existed, in the limited quantities it’s being produced, and at the same price point as the U24 Pro

--> Or (mind you, no fact-basis for this whatsoever): HTC themselves could have facilitated a deal between that "Trump company" and the ODM in order to get out of their ODM-contract for the U24. HTC could have waived possible exclusivity-agreements in order to settle outstanding agreed supply-volume (in the scheme of "we bring someone else to take the volume" and won't hinder any deal).

In my experience dealing with this kind of smartphone ODM-deals, it's not unusual to negotiate a "transfer" of the outstanding committed volume to a new project (the ODM wants to continue business with the customer, the customer won't do that if he has to pay a penalty). So it's not that far-fetched to negotiate a partial transfer to someone else entirely...

Also, HTC having a corporate office in Washington, while that "Trump phone" company never built a phone before, I wouldn't be surprised if my baseless assumption turns out to have some merit...

rickdeckard•about 4 hours ago

Insane detail:

-) Estimations are that the HTC U24 Pro sold just ~10.000 units globally since 2024, at ~459 USD*

-) The "Trump T1" variant is rumored to have sold ~30.000 units in 2026(!), at 499 USD

--> So they managed to sell a 2-year old device at a HIGHER price than HTC did, and sold ~3 times the volume in ~6 months of what HTC achieved WITHIN TWO-YEARS just by branding it with the "Trump" Name...

If that doesn't at least demonstrate how broken the competitive landscape in the smartphone industry is (me gently excluding the gravity of the 'Trump' branding), I don't know anymore...

*) approx., with 2024-style memory/storage spec of 8GB/128GB