iFixit Trump phone teardown confirms it’s an HTC dupe

After getting its hands on a Trump phone and tearing it apart, iFixit has confirmed what I first reported back in February: the T1 Phone is an almost exact duplicate of the HTC U24 Pro.

iFixit partnered with NBC to get hold of the network’s media sample of the Trump phone, along with a U24 Pro. They ran the phones through a CT scanner, tore them down to parts, and even put them back together into a functional Frankenstein phone with the U24 Pro’s board inside the T1 Phone’s chassis, confirming along the way that the two phones are functionally identical.

There are minor differences: the flash has been moved slightly, the speaker grille was tweaked, and the chipset package — while the same in specs — was supplied by Micron for the Trump phone, and SK Hynix for the HTC. The bigger change is to the battery: the Trump phone’s cell is slightly larger, and made in the Philippines rather than China, though supports slower 30W charging.

We’d long suspected that the T1 Phone matched the U24 Pro, given both phones share a distinctive chassis design, almost identical specs, and matching headphone jacks and microSD card slots. iFixit’s work here just about confirms that.

HTC previously told The Verge that it “does not design or manufacture phones for third parties,” but wouldn’t confirm any details about the manufacturing of the U24 Pro. Given that HTC sold most of its smartphone business to Google in 2017, it seems likely that it contracted a third-party company to design and manufacture the U24 Pro, and Trump Mobile turned to the same company for its T1 Phone. And as I reported last week, the U24 Pro was made in China. Place your bets now on where the Trump phone is made.

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