Phones | The Verge

The Trump phone starts shipping this week, company claims

2026-05-13T12:36:54-04:00

The Trump phone may finally be here: Trump Mobile claims that the phone will begin shipping to buyers this week. The announcement comes as reports have gone viral this week alleging that preorders for the phone have been canceled.

Trump Mobile CEO Pat O'Brien first confirmed the release plans to USA Today, telling the outlet that all preorders will be fulfilled within the next few weeks. The company later confirmed the news on its social media accounts, using a very normal number of exclamation marks in the process.

The T1 Phone has arrived!! Those who pre-ordered the T1 Phone will be receiving an update email. Phones start shipping this …

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Amazon’s Panos Panay addresses new Fire phone rumors

2026-05-13T05:32:51-04:00

Amazon's head of devices and services, Panos Panay, says that the company is "not necessarily" planning to release a smartphone, but has stopped short of denying it outright. It was previously reported that Amazon is developing an Alexa-enabled AI phone codenamed "Transformer," more than 10 years after it scrapped its ill-fated Fire Phone.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Panay was asked directly if the company was planning another smartphone. "It's just not the goal," he replied. "I know there's a lot of rumors out there."

"I think your black and white question is, are you going after a phone? A lot of people want me to say no, but a lot …

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Sony’s new Xperia phone gets an overdue redesign

2026-05-13T05:41:17-04:00

Sony’s new flagship doesn’t look much like its predecessors. | Image: Sony / The Verge

Sony's Xperia 1 flagships have looked more or less the same since 2020, but that's finally changing with the Xperia 1 VIII, which moves to a chunky square camera island. The phone also boasts what should be a substantially improved telephoto camera, along with an AI camera assistant that looks like an improved version of Google's Camera Coach.

While every previous Xperia 1 phone has had three vertical cameras, and the last six have positioned them in the same top-left corner spot, the 1 VIII mixes things up. The three lenses are now laid out in a square block, together with the flash and a Sony logo, that's raised from the phone but slopes …

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Someone out-Trumped the Trump phone

2026-05-08T13:38:53-04:00

These are just five of the 29 versions of the Aurora Lux that Dreame claims it will release. | Screenshot: Dreame

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. This week, Trump Mobile has been trumped.

It's been another long week without the Trump phone, but it's no longer the only nonexistent phone I have to worry about. Robot vacuum manufacturer Dreame has announced its own set of phones that are unlikely to ever launch, and one of them takes the Trump phone playbook and amps it up to 11.

I was alerted to the existence of Dreame's two new phones shortly after I filed last week's report on the T1 Phone's PTCRB certification, though they "launched" las …

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OpenAI is reportedly launching a phone for ChatGPT

2026-05-05T11:40:07-04:00

OpenAI's first hardware product might be a phone instead of a mysterious Jony Ive gadget. As reported by MacRumors, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared details about the rumored phone, claiming OpenAI is "fast-tracking" it and aiming to start mass production in early 2027.

According to Kuo, the phone will run on a "customized version of the [MediaTek] Dimensity 9600," which is expected to launch this fall and follow up the Dimensity 9500 currently powering phones like the Vivo X300 Pro and the Oppo Find X9 Pro.

The custom chip's "headline spec" will be its image signal processor (ISP), which will have "enhanced HDR" that Kuo says wi …

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The Pixel 11 could be the next victim of the RAM shortage

2026-05-04T13:47:11-04:00

Google's next round of Pixel phones could be a downgrade compared to the Pixel 10 lineup due to the ongoing RAM shortage. Leaked specs for the Pixel 11 lineup shared by MysticLeaks include a possible starting configuration with only 8GB of RAM, rather than the current 12GB, as Android Headlines reports.

According to MysticLeaks, Google may also add a second configuration for the Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL, and Pro Fold with 12GB of RAM, down from the current 16GB in each model. There will be 16GB configurations available for each, but adding a lower-spec model could mean the 16GB version is getting a price hike. However, the silver lining is tha …

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Dreame — the vacuum company — just ‘launched’ its own phones

2026-05-01T19:11:56-04:00

This is just one of 29 different Aurora Lux designs. | Photo by Kelsey McClellan / The Verge

Dreame, a Chinese manufacturer best known for its robot vacuums but with ambitions to do much more, says it's making smartphones now. I'm not sure I believe it.

The company showed off two phones at its own Next event, which took place in California this week, though both had previously been revealed in China in March. Neither phone has actually launched, though - in China, the US, or elsewhere - and the company has revealed only a handful of specs about either.

Aurora Nex LS1 is the more interesting of the two, but also the less plausible. It's a modular smartphone with a magnetic attachment point where the rear camera would normally be. D …

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We just got a new reason to believe the Trump phone is real(ish)

2026-05-01T12:28:39-04:00

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. This time we've discovered a little more evidence that the phone is on its way to a release.

Trump Mobile's T1 Phone has just passed another milestone on its slow road to release. The phone has received the little-known PTCRB certification, a first step toward being certified to work on major networks and be issued with IMEI numbers.

You probably haven't heard of PTCRB certification - I hadn't until recently. It doesn't come up very often. It's the North American certification process for smartp …

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The US gets the worst phones

2026-04-24T09:11:27-04:00

Apple and Samsung dominate the US phone market, and they've done so for years. Together with Google, they've shaped our sense of what a smartphone is and what it can do, pushing the boundaries of mobile photography, software, and processing power. But over the last few years, they've sat back, content to iterate rather than innovate - and in the interim, China's tech giants have plowed ahead. Now a gulf is growing between the phones on sale in the US and those available in the rest of the world. US phone buyers are missing out.

Some of the blame for that gap lies with Apple. Where it goes, the market follows, and in recent years it's gone s …

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The Trump phone still isn’t real

2026-04-24T05:16:01-04:00

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. We're back to being ignored, and the phone seems no closer to an actual launch.

Last week Trump Mobile overhauled its website, in the process officially revealing the updated design of its T1 Phone, with a new spec sheet to match. You'd be forgiven for thinking that means it's ready to release, but make no mistake: beyond a possible FCC authorization and a single phone someone showed me over a video call, there's still no proof the Trump phone is ever going to launch.

The phone's shiny new desig …

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