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- JerryRigEverything did a teardown and durability test on Trump’s phone
- This revealed that it is so similar to an HTC phone that you can even swap their motherboards
- Trump’s phone at least survived the durability tests
It started to feel like we didn’t need to hear about the Trump Mobile T1 anymore, but a new durability test confirmed what we already largely knew – namely that it’s little more than a rebranded HTC.
An earlier teardown by iFixit revealed that the Trump phone had essentially identical specifications and components to the HTC U24 Pro – a mid-range Taiwanese phone from 2024. The design is ever so slightly different, with the Trump phone having a different camera housing and a gold paint job, but the dimensions are also the same.
Now, however, JerryRigEverything has gone a step further, revealing that not only is the internal layout the same, down to the number of screws, but if you swap the Trump phone’s motherboard with the HTC U24 Pro’s, both phones still work.
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So Trump’s phone is really almost a carbon copy of that HTC handset – rather questioning his claims to be a “proud American”.
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Passes the durability test
The only downside to all of this is that, by being essentially an HTC U24 Pro, Trump’s phone matches that device for durability. It has survived being bent in multiple directions, apparently has effective water resistance, and has a screen that is just as scratch-resistant as most modern smartphones.
So if you bought one of these devices, it could at least last a while – but that’s probably more down to designers and engineers in Taiwan than anyone in the US.
And even if you haven’t bought one yet, the video is worth watching, targeting not just the phone, but the entire Trump administration, to the point where one Reddit commenter described it as “the funniest durability test video I’ve ever seen.”
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