Nearly 600,000 Trump supporters paid £74 ($100) each towards a gold smartphone that, nearly a year on, does not exist.
TheTrump Mobile T1 phonewas announced in June 2025 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as a patriotic alternative to Apple and Samsung, retailing at £370 ($499) and promising a 'Made in the USA' build.
An estimated 590,000 buyers paid a £74 ($100) deposit to secure one, collectively handing the venture roughly £43.7 million ($59 million). As of May 2026,not a single confirmed customerhas received the device. Now, a fresh wave of anger is spreading across MAGA forums after buyers received communication making clear that their money is, for all practical purposes, gone.
Trump Mobile launched on 16 June 2025 at an announcement at Trump Tower, headlined by the president's two eldest sons and timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign launch. The T1 was marketed as a gold-coloured Android handset bearing an American flag on its back and bundled with a monthly service plan at £37.50 ($47.45) per month. Initial delivery was promised for late summer 2025.
That deadline slipped to November 2025, then December, then the first quarter of 2026. A mid-March 2026 T-Mobile carrier certification deadline also passed without resolution. By April 2026, Trump Mobile quietly redesigned its website, removing the release date entirely rather than replacing it with a new one.
Did Trump scam his fans with the Trump phone he promised last summer?pic.twitter.com/4gN4zk5wSr
NBC News, which placed its own £74 ($100) deposit in August 2025 to track the story,called Trump Mobile's support line five timesbetween September and November 2025 and received inconsistent answers each time. A representative said in October that the phone would ship on 13 November, but it did not.
In January 2026, a call centre operator said the T1 was 'in the final stages of certification and field testing,' with a ship date 'sometime in Q1 2026.' That quarter has now passed. At one point, customer service representatives blamed a 43-day federal government shutdown for the delay, an explanationanalysts quickly dismissedas irrelevant to a private-sector hardware company.
Wow those Gold Trump phones that 590,000 people paid a $100 deposit on still haven’t been delivered after told they would be by September so NBC who bought one tried to call the Company & there’s no phone number only a email.They asked if they could get a refund & were told NO!😂pic.twitter.com/EucWcjyorm
The terms confirm that deposits will not accrue interest, are non-transferable and carry no independent cash value. Buyers who wish to cancel must submit a request through customer support before any final sale is completed. If Trump Mobile cancels the project outright, it says it will issue refunds of the original deposit amount. The fine print adds, however, that the company bears no liability for delays caused by 'parts shortages or hold-ups with regulators,' and that buyers waive any right to pursue claims beyond the original deposit figure.
Source: International Business Times UK
