Speaker 1: Time for Tech Tuesday. Mike Dubuski, ABC News Technology reporter
Speaker 1: Mike is always thanks for hanging out. Quick question, well,
Speaker 1: I even actually not even quick. The Trump family phone plan.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: bought a one of the Trump ties bibles. The stakes
Speaker 1: were very strong, and now we've got the phone plan,
Speaker 1: tell us about it. Why would other than for political reasons,
Speaker 1: why would I buy a phone plan?
Speaker 2: That's a great question, and I will try to measure
Speaker 2: up to the astronaut here. I know it's tough act
Speaker 2: to follow, but yes. On Monday here in New York City,
Speaker 2: the Trump Organization, which is not run by President Donald
Speaker 2: Trump but rather run by his sons Eric and Don Junior,
Speaker 2: announced that they're getting into the telecom space with Trump Mobile.
Speaker 2: This is what's known as an MVNO or a virtual
Speaker 2: mobile excuse me, a virtual mobile network operator, which kind
Speaker 2: of piggybacks off the larger service providers in the United
Speaker 2: States AT and T, Verizon T Mobile, so it should
Speaker 2: offer the same coverage as those types of service providers.
Speaker 2: It is forty seven forty five a month, which are
Speaker 2: significant numbers for the Trump family given that that is
Speaker 2: sort of his place in the presidential line. But that
Speaker 2: is a little bit more expensive than what we would
Speaker 2: expect from some of the competitors in this smaller network space,
Speaker 2: things like mint Mobile or things like Cricket wireless. This
Speaker 2: is a little bit pricier than that. But the Trump
Speaker 2: family is saying that they're offering some bonuses, things like
Speaker 2: roadside assistance and telehealth services. We don't know really how
Speaker 2: that's going to work in practice, but that is what
Speaker 2: they are saying. Justifies that additional cost. And in addition,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that they say that this will work
Speaker 2: with pretty much any modern smartphone, they're also offering their
Speaker 2: own smartphone. But this thing also raises a little bit
Speaker 2: more questions than it, you know, maybe at first Blush answers.
Speaker 2: It is called the one. Its full name is actually
Speaker 2: T one Phone eight thousand and two gold version. It
Speaker 2: is gold. It has a big T on the back
Speaker 2: and an American flag. They say it has a six
Speaker 2: point eight inch screen with a one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: hertz for fresh rate, of fifty megapixel camera and a
Speaker 2: five thousand milliampaer long life battery. So it is a
Speaker 2: pretty standard mid range Android device. But there are some
Speaker 2: question marks on the website if you dive a little
Speaker 2: deeper into the specs. For example, the processor and RAM
Speaker 2: section claims that the storage of this phone is twelve
Speaker 2: gigabytes of RAM. Ram and storage are two different things,
Speaker 2: so we don't really know what the storage is here.
Speaker 2: We also don't know what the processor is up until
Speaker 2: this morning when they change it. They also claim to
Speaker 2: have a five thousand milliamp hoer camera of millionp howers
Speaker 2: are used to describe battery size, so that is also
Speaker 2: a sort of question mark there. The photo they have
Speaker 2: appears to be a computer rendering. It looks sort of
Speaker 2: iPhone esque, but there's no flash next to the camera array,
Speaker 2: so that's a question mark as well. These are all
Speaker 2: things that maybe give people pause before they put down
Speaker 2: the one hundred dollars deposit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and by the way, one hundred dollars deposit towards.
Speaker 2: How much five hundred dollars is.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, but obviously not the gold phone.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting, right they call it the gold version,
Speaker 2: implying a non gold version, a standard version, but that
Speaker 2: there's no real evidence of that on the website at
Speaker 2: this point. And in addition to that, that five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars should also give us a little pause as well,
Speaker 2: because the Trump family claims that they're going to build
Speaker 2: this phone here. Yes, at some point.
Speaker 1: That is the question I asked, How does someone build
Speaker 1: a phone? Considering the intricacies and the manufacturing, et cetera
Speaker 1: in the United States, how do you physically do that?
Speaker 2: It's really difficult. In short, for one all the reasons
Speaker 2: that you laid out right, there's no real infrastructure to
Speaker 2: do this. The Trump family would need to spin up
Speaker 2: a factory to do this and agree with suppliers to
Speaker 2: build the materials needed for this phone in the United
Speaker 2: States as well. And in addition to that, there are
Speaker 2: no major smartphone manufacturers building phones in the US, so
Speaker 2: there's no real knowledge base to hire people to do this,
Speaker 2: at least here in the US either. So it's going
Speaker 2: to be a big task if that is exactly what
Speaker 2: they're trying to do. Now, we've seen similar phones like
Speaker 2: this crop up aimed at like one specific side of
Speaker 2: the political aisle, on both sides of the aisle, where
Speaker 2: essentially they've bought cheap phones from China and then imported
Speaker 2: them into the United States with different branding on them.
Speaker 2: There's a phone called the Freedom Phone a few years
Speaker 2: ago that basically did that. But again, a major point
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration, which again is separate from the
Speaker 2: Trump Organization, so they say, you know, is aimed at
Speaker 2: bringing manufacturing back to the United States. So that's what
Speaker 2: they say they're going to do. But even still, for
Speaker 2: all the reasons that we've outlined, there's some reason to
Speaker 2: be skeptical of that.
Speaker 1: All right, I wish we had more time. I know
Speaker 1: you have to be a lot of here, you got
Speaker 1: a lot more reported to do. Thank you. We'll talk
Speaker 1: again because there's a ton of questions I have about
Speaker 1: that and the the meta story. Take care, Mike, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Take it.