Donald Trump’s $499 gold phone has finally launched – and it has a huge design flaw

As experts compared the T1 to an HTC model assembled in Taiwan, the symbolism grew heavier than the hardware itself. The missing stripes became a shorthand for modern political branding: big rhetoric, fuzzy details. Yet preorder shipments are still rolling out, and plenty of buyers say they don’t care where every component comes from. In the end, the T1 may work just fine as a phone. As a patriotic icon, though, it’s already dropped the call.