Trump Phones Start Shipping - But Were There Really 600,000 Preorders? (usatoday.com) 55
USA Today reports:
Trump Mobile phones are being shipped this week, the company exclusively confirmed to USA TODAY in an email May 11....
The company's first smartphone — the T1 Phone — was originally scheduled for release in August. However, the golden gadget's release was later delayed to October before being pushed back again to this week. Now, Trump Mobile CEO Pat O'Brien told USA TODAY, pre-ordered phones will start getting sent out to customers this week... O'Brien said the company anticipates all pre-ordered phones to be delivered within the next several weeks... The company's 5G "47 Plan" is available for $47.45 a month, a nod to President Donald Trump's two presidential terms, according to the website... Customers will also have Trump(SM) displayed as the status bar in their network.
The Verge reported the phone was added last week to Google's public list of devices certified for Google Play, "usually one of the final steps before an Android phone is launched." Trump Mobile may have broken radio silence partly in response to a recent wave of media coverage alleging that buyers had received emails notifying them that their preorders had been canceled, coverage that even made it onto Stephen Colbert's The Late Show... [T]here's seemingly no evidence of the alleged cancellation emails beyond unverified social media claims. In January The Verge also questioned reports that 600,000 people preordered the Trump phone with a $100 deposit. "I can't find a shred of evidence that this figure is true," calling it "a microcosm of how the modern media landscape and AI chatbots can combine to give falsities the sheen of respectability." I first saw the figure in, of all places, the Threads feed of California governor Gavin Newsom's press office, which had shared a screenshot of a tweet of a Grok summary making the claim. Trustworthy, right? The Grok post cites "reports from sources like Fortune, NPR, and The Guardian" for the 600,000 preorders, but a quick search of their recent output shows no sign of the number... India's Economic Times and Hindustan Times both reported a more specific figure of 590,000 preorders, referencing an unspecified Associated Press report as the source. [The Associated Press] VP of corporate communications, Lauren Easton, confirmed to me that "AP's original stories never contained such a number...."
Hindustan Times writer Shamik Banerjee called the citation "a typo," and told me that the figure was in fact taken from The Times of India. The Times of India story, which is bylined only to the newspaper's lifestyle desk, is more transparent in its sourcing: a viral post by a meme account... It's been covered by multiple publications, now presented as fact on MSN.com and tech site Phone Arena. And that coverage has helped it to filter into the chatbots and not just Grok — Gemini and ChatGPT were both happy to confirm to me that 600,000 T1 Phones have been ordered so far, the former falsely attributing the number to the Associated Press, and the latter to Phone Arena.
As for how many Trump Phone preorders have actually been placed? No one outside the company knows.
The Verge reported the phone was added last week to Google's public list of devices certified for Google Play, "usually one of the final steps before an Android phone is launched." Trump Mobile may have broken radio silence partly in response to a recent wave of media coverage alleging that buyers had received emails notifying them that their preorders had been canceled, coverage that even made it onto Stephen Colbert's The Late Show... [T]here's seemingly no evidence of the alleged cancellation emails beyond unverified social media claims. In January The Verge also questioned reports that 600,000 people preordered the Trump phone with a $100 deposit. "I can't find a shred of evidence that this figure is true," calling it "a microcosm of how the modern media landscape and AI chatbots can combine to give falsities the sheen of respectability." I first saw the figure in, of all places, the Threads feed of California governor Gavin Newsom's press office, which had shared a screenshot of a tweet of a Grok summary making the claim. Trustworthy, right? The Grok post cites "reports from sources like Fortune, NPR, and The Guardian" for the 600,000 preorders, but a quick search of their recent output shows no sign of the number... India's Economic Times and Hindustan Times both reported a more specific figure of 590,000 preorders, referencing an unspecified Associated Press report as the source. [The Associated Press] VP of corporate communications, Lauren Easton, confirmed to me that "AP's original stories never contained such a number...."
Hindustan Times writer Shamik Banerjee called the citation "a typo," and told me that the figure was in fact taken from The Times of India. The Times of India story, which is bylined only to the newspaper's lifestyle desk, is more transparent in its sourcing: a viral post by a meme account... It's been covered by multiple publications, now presented as fact on MSN.com and tech site Phone Arena. And that coverage has helped it to filter into the chatbots and not just Grok — Gemini and ChatGPT were both happy to confirm to me that 600,000 T1 Phones have been ordered so far, the former falsely attributing the number to the Associated Press, and the latter to Phone Arena.
As for how many Trump Phone preorders have actually been placed? No one outside the company knows.
Trump Fone (Score:2)
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name checks out
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I bet someone here did.
Obviously NO! (Score:4, Informative)
Betteridge's law of headlines with a question mark states, that such questions are always to be answered with 'NO'.
taunt-- (Score:2)
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will start shipping (Score:4, Insightful)
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They'll probably be big in Israel.
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Or possibly a small island in the West Indies hosting a singular mansion...
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Re:will start shipping (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think it will be a problem. These are $150 Chinese phones with a coat of cheap gold paint. They can get a few hundred of them and send them out and it'll make it look like they aren't scamming people at least for a little while.
The summary should also mention that the main selling point of the Trump phone was that it was supposed to be Made in America. That was a major part of the sales pitch and a key promise that motivated whatever pre-orders they got. To whatever extent the alleged 600k pre-orders is plausible, it was that promise that made it so. But Trump Mobile quietly changed the terms on their web site, removing the "Made in America" promise and replacing it with a claim that the phones are "Designed with American values in mind".
My guess is that they announced before even checking whether they could actually make a phone, typical Trump business "strategy", then discovered that doing it ranges from extremely difficult/expensive to impossible depending on how you define "made". You could probably import all the parts and assemble them in the US, though it'd add a lot of cost (Moto tried it). You simply couldn't create an even marginally-decent device from chips fabbed here. You could get an SoC and a modem that are only a few years behind current flagships, thanks to TSMC Arizona (thanks, Biden!), but DRAM, flash, display, camera sensor, MLCCs... even high-density PCBs are available only from Asia.
Note that I think this is a national security problem that needs serious attention. We're way too dependent on foreign manufacturing chains for critical components, components that aren't just needed for modern consumer electronics, but for high-tech weaponry. Biden made a little bit of a start on addressing it with the CHIPS act, but Trump has undermined a lot of that (and wants to repeal it entirely). To really get to where you could build something comparable to a five year-old flagship entirely in the US would require another half-dozen CHIPS Acts focusing on flash, displays, image sensors, MLCCCs, PCBs, batteries (the US makes lots of Li-ion batteries but they're EV batteries and the differences in form factor, chemistry and defect rates between those and phone batteries are enormous), etc. We're just that far behind.
Re:will start shipping (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary should also mention that the main selling point of the Trump phone was that it was supposed to be Made in America. That was a major part of the sales pitch and a key promise that motivated whatever pre-orders they got. To whatever extent the alleged 600k pre-orders is plausible, it was that promise that made it so. But Trump Mobile quietly changed the terms on their web site, removing the "Made in America" promise and replacing it with a claim that the phones are "Designed with American values in mind".
I am starting to understand the hard core maga mind. It is basically binary thinking. It goes like this: Trump is good. Trump sells phone, phone is good. Others say phone is bad. That means Trump is bad. That is not true. Therefore the ones claiming that the phone is bad are bad. Then the rationalization starts. it can go in all sorts of directions. Usually it is a mix of the blame game (Biden made him do it!), Trump is a genius and you just do not understand (Trump made sure the company is moving production to the US as soon as possible!) or they just attack. (You do not even try!)
So soothing... Much more soothing than the reality behind it, but they just do not want to get out of that cozy bubble. Whatever you say. Trump good, phone good, you? Bad.
Re:will start shipping (Score:4, Informative)
That's why it is so hard to convince someone that they have been fooled by their sect leader, or that the are simply and plainly wrong about something.
Cognitive dissonance is very very important for understanding us humans. It takes a lot of mental effort to really keep an open mind.
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It is very recognizable in extremist thinking. One day a doctor will discover it correlates with a part of the brain that is crooked. He will devise a drug (with side effects) to reduce it. Faith of course will make sure the drug can only be delivered with a sort of vaccine. Then things will become... interesting
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You pretty much got it. I saw an interview done by a kid to their MAGA parents. They asked if there would be any problems if Trump ordered the nuking of Omaha NE. They said, as long as Trump said it h
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Gold iphones have been a thing in Saudi for many years already. Apparently the cheaper regular iphones stain too easily (with all the oil fumes).
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Doesn't count until we see some in the wild.
No kidding! If Trump had decent PR, they would have had one of the "engineers" of the phone "accidentally" leave one at a bar in San Francisco by now.
They eat to much (Score:2)
The AI bots lately digest to much postings from social media and other unreliable sources. Is this due to lack of reliable sources in general? Have we reached the tip of knowledge?
Something is fishy (Score:2, Flamebait)
A week ago they told everyone that they weren't going to ship and that they were keeping the money. Now they're telling everyone they shipped.
What I suspect they are doing is shipping a few of the phones but they're not going to ship everything and they're going to use the confusion from the handful they did ship to make it until after the midterms when Trump can issue pardons for all the people involved including himself.
It won't affect state level crimes but the
ah well on the bright side #45 (Score:2, Funny)
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Only Funny on the ripe target? Too bad.
Just reading Mindf*ck and feeling like it explains a lot about how America was made so ungreat. Not enough there about who got the loot, but I've already gotten sick of books about cryptocurrencies and blockchains.
You can't put a price on that. Okay, you can. (Score:2)
The company's 5G "47 Plan" is available for $47.45 a month, a nod to President Donald Trump's two presidential terms, according to the website...
If it's one thing people like, it's arbitrary pricing.
(Good thing similar services aren't available elsewhere for less, otherwise you'd just be giving rich guys more money. /s)
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As the 45th and 47th President, I don't think it is as arbitrary as you want to imagine.
Sure, but having trouble seeing how those would relate to actually pricing a cell phone plan though. If customers don't care that it's detached from anything tangible or operational, fine, but, like the gold, it's just more idolatry. What are those sayings, "There's a sucker born every minute" and "A fool and his money are soon parted".
Money laundering (Score:4, Interesting)
Excellent way to launder $60M in bribes.
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Made in the USA (Score:2)
I'm waiting for your apologies
Anyone else make a gold smartphone? (Score:2)
Could be useful in helping decide who gets seated last, who doesn't get into the club, who gets bumped from a flight.
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You know that gold iPhones are wildly popular in China and other Asian countries, right?
record-setting virginity (Score:1)
of all the pathetic sad virgin shit america has gotten up to lately, this is, bar none, the most pathetic virgin fanboy bullshit anybody has ever heard. what a bunch of fucking jerkoffs lol.
Obviously not (Score:1)
Will wait for the reviews (Score:2)
Of course, if the review is bad, then it is a fake news review.
Why is ... (Score:2)
the Threads feed of California governor Gavin Newsom's press office,
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the Threads feed of California governor Gavin Newsom's press office,
He's afraid it might impact Trump Knee Pad sales? [instagram.com]
What a stupid stupid way to price a product (Score:1)
Does anyone share... (Score:1)
As for how many Trump Phone preorders have actually been placed? No one outside the company knows
Do manufacturers usually provide documentary proof of pre-orders to anyone in the press that asks?
Another Sucker is born (Score:1)
The losers' phone. (Score:1)
How many were ordered? (Score:2)
That's an easy question to answer. Just walk down to the US factory making them and ask how many orders they have been asked to fill. They did promise that it would be built in the U.S.A., even though we don't have a factory capable of doing this.
What? You mean these weren't actually manufactured in the US? Yes, Americas's Phone is made by China. Smart Gadgets Global is just a shell company fronting for Shenzhen China.
https://smartgadgetsglobal.com... [smartgadgetsglobal.com] https://device.report/smart-ga... [device.report]
So, no MAGA/US e