590,000 people handed $100 each to a company that promised them a gold smartphone. Nearly a year later, the company has $59 million, the customers have nothing, and the fine print says that’s perfectly legal.

The Trump Mobile T1 phone was announced in June 2025 at Trump Tower by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, pitched as a patriotic alternative to Apple and Samsung. The gold-coloured Android handset would retail at $499, bear an American flag on its back, and be built in the United States. A $100 deposit secured your place in line.

As of May 2026, not a single confirmed customer has received the device.

Deadlines That Kept Moving

Initial delivery was promised for late summer 2025. That slipped to November, then December, then the first quarter of 2026. A mid-March 2026 carrier certification deadline also passed without resolution. By April, Trump Mobile quietly redesigned its website and removed the release date entirely rather than replace it with a new one.

NBC News, which placed its own $100 deposit in August 2025 to track the story, called Trump Mobile’s support line five times between September and November and received inconsistent answers each time. A representative said in October that the phone would ship on 13 November. It did not. At one point, customer service blamed a 43-day federal government shutdown for the delay — an explanation analysts dismissed as irrelevant to a private-sector hardware company.

The Fine Print Rewrite

On 6 April 2026, Trump Mobile published revised terms of service that gutted buyer protections. The updated document states that paying a deposit “does not constitute a completed purchase and does not create a binding legal contract.” The payment is described as “a conditional opportunity to buy the device if Trump Mobile eventually chooses to sell it,” with the company retaining all control over whether a phone is produced at all.

The terms confirm deposits will not accrue interest, are non-transferable and carry no independent cash value. The company says it will issue refunds if the project is cancelled outright, but bears no liability for delays caused by “parts shortages or hold-ups with regulators.”

Investigative journalist Joseph Cox of 404 Media, who attempted to place a deposit at launch, called it “the worst experience I’ve ever faced buying a consumer electronic product.” He subsequently reported unauthorised recurring charges on customers’ cards.

‘Made in USA’ Becomes Something Else

The T1 was sold on the promise of American manufacturing. Within days of the June 2025 launch, “MADE IN THE USA” vanished from the Trump Mobile website, replaced first by “American-proud design,” then “Brought to life right here in the USA” — language supply chain experts noted was legally and commercially meaningless.

By February 2026, company executives confirmed the T1 would not be manufactured in the United States. Final assembly of roughly the last ten components would take place in Miami, with bulk production overseas.

Todd Weaver, chief executive of Purism — widely considered the only company fully assembling smartphones domestically — told CNN he believes the Trump phone is likely produced by Wingtech, a Chinese electronics manufacturer. Max Weinbach from Creative Strategies was blunter: “There are only realistically four or five smartphone ODMs [original device manufacturers] that would be able to manufacture something like this. All of them are based out of China.”

The Business Behind the Brand

Trump Mobile is not a Trump invention. According to The Verge, the concept originated with executives at Liberty Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator that had previously tested the same celebrity-licensing playbook with Mexican boxer Canelo Álvarez. The company operates as an MVNO, reselling network access from existing carriers rather than building infrastructure of its own.

In January 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren and ten other Democratic lawmakers wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to investigate “bait-and-switch tactics involving deposits for products never delivered.” California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office publicly described the T1 project as appearing to be “FRAUD.”

The FTC has not publicly confirmed an investigation. Trump Mobile has not responded to multiple press inquiries.

Android Authority, which placed its own deposit in 2025, wrote in January 2026 that it expected to “never get a phone” and “never see the $100 deposit again.” For 590,000 buyers, that prediction is looking less like pessimism and more like a balance sheet.

Sources