Yo team — I got to hold the actual Trump phone for a few minutes recently because someone scored one of these incredibly rare devices and let me see it, and man, it is an experience. At first glance you think: wow, gold! But as you look closer, the gold treatment looks like pee in certain lighting, and the branding — giant American flag and "Trump Mobile" across a plastic back panel with curved sides like old Motorola Edge phones — just keeps going up. It even comes with its own tiny printed user manual in the box, which is kind of adorable and totally on-brand. Then iFixit did their teardown this week and confirmed what we all knew: it's literally just a midrange HTC phone they slapped gold paint over, with Truth Social preinstalled (you can uninstall that one) and everything else about it — feel, weight, software — screams "rebranded budget Android."
But here’s the thing that really hit me because I want you to see what this is NOT. That same week I ran into Technical Guruji who holds a gold phone that was not painted on at all; his is solid gold, custom engraved with intricate images of Hindu gods and their devotees by artisan craftspeople. Running my fingers over those real engravings made it obvious how much painstaking craftsmanship went into his piece — one-of-one work, genuinely beautiful. The contrast makes the Trump phone reveal itself for what it is: a gimmick wrapped in branding. It's not that there was nothing good to see this week; there were two golden phones and only one of them had anything real behind its shine. That's my take — you can judge for yourself whether this brand of marketing is something worth following or just another expensive gold coat over a midrange Android.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/tech/948464/trump-phone-t1-hands-on
But here’s the thing that really hit me because I want you to see what this is NOT. That same week I ran into Technical Guruji who holds a gold phone that was not painted on at all; his is solid gold, custom engraved with intricate images of Hindu gods and their devotees by artisan craftspeople. Running my fingers over those real engravings made it obvious how much painstaking craftsmanship went into his piece — one-of-one work, genuinely beautiful. The contrast makes the Trump phone reveal itself for what it is: a gimmick wrapped in branding. It's not that there was nothing good to see this week; there were two golden phones and only one of them had anything real behind its shine. That's my take — you can judge for yourself whether this brand of marketing is something worth following or just another expensive gold coat over a midrange Android.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/tech/948464/trump-phone-t1-hands-on