Eli Tan and Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times:

On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device’s default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.

(a) I’ve never once looked at the Updates tab in WhatsApp; (b) does anyone believe they’re not going to put ads in the other tabs sooner or later?

Todd Spangler, Variety:

Meanwhile, the Trump Mobile “47 Plan” is pricier than the unlimited plans from prepaid services operated by Verizon’s Visible, AT&T’s Cricket Wireless and T-Mobile’s Metro, which are each around $40 per month.

The Trump T1 Phone, which runs Google’s Android operating system, will cost $499. It features a 6.8-inch touch-screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate. The smartphone also has a “fingerprint sensor and AI Face Unlock,” according to the company’s website. Reps for Trump Mobile didn’t respond to an inquiry about what company is manufacturing the Android phone.

The Wall Street Journal, “Trump’s Smartphone Can’t Be Made in America for $499 by August”:

A spokesman for the Trump Organization said in an email that “manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.”

Despite the language in the press release, Eric Trump indicated that the first wave of phones wouldn’t be built here. “You can build these phones in the United States,” the Trump son told podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday morning on The Benny Show after holding up a gilded device that looked just like an Apple iPhone. “Eventually, all the phones can be built in the United States of America. We have to bring manufacturing back here.”

The Journal goofs, bigly, by claiming that the T1 “shows some specs that would beat Apple’s biggest, priciest iPhone models”. The T1 specs are so idiotic that one of them claims “5000mAh long life camera”, conflating battery capacity with (I guess?) focal distance.

The Verge, “The Trump Mobile T1 Phone Looks Both Bad and Impossible”:

Where things get especially strange, though, is its supposed combination of Android 15, 5G, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. In many ways, these are opposing specs: Android 15 is generally only available on very recent devices, many cheap phones still don’t support 5G, and almost every phone maker has stopped including headphone jacks with their devices in the last few years. There are a few that have both, but modern phones with a headphone jack are few and far between. And pretty much all made in China.

I don’t know what will be funnier — if Trump himself starts using one of these, or if he doesn’t.

I’ll give them credit for making them available exclusively in gold. That’s on brand. But I’m guessing the quality will be on par with Trump Watches, which is to say, “RUMP”-quality.

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My thanks to DetailsPro for sponsoring last week at DF — including being a sponsor on The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2025. DetailsPro is a designer/developer tool that lets you design with SwiftUI anytime, anywhere — from iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, and, of course, Mac.

With WWDC 2025’s introduction of Liquid Glass, Apple has introduced the biggest design overhaul since iOS 7. DetailsPro is ready for it, enabling you to prototype new and updated interfaces fast. You can build real SwiftUI layouts directly on your iPhone — no code needed. Export clean SwiftUI code straight to Xcode when you’re ready.

While everyone else is still thinking about how to adapt to the Liquid Glass era, you can already be building. DetailsPro is free to use, with pro features if you need them — via subscription, or a one-time purchase.

Recorded in front of a live audience at The California Theatre in San Jose Tuesday evening, special guests Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel join me to discuss Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2025.