Like President Barack Obama before him, Donald Trump will also have to give up his personal smartphone and replace it with one that the intelligence agencies deem to be secure for the office. In fact, new reports indicate that Donald Trump has already traded in his Galaxy smartphone that he used more than once for tweeting purposes.
Trump this week was forced to give up his Trump 757 plane for an Air Force jet, The New York Times reports, and then he swapped his Android phone for a “secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service with a new number that few people possess.”
That also means that the usual people who’d call Trump on his personal number won’t be able to reach him.
It’s unclear at this time whether Trump will be allowed to use any other additional smartphone on top of what he’s forced to use as President. It’s also unclear how the president will send out tweets now that his phone is gone.
Before Trump, Obama also tried to hold on to his beloved personal phone when he became president, a BlackBerry handset. He was ultimately able to keep it after it had suffered some modifications.
Last summer, President Obama told Jimmy Fallon that he did upgrade to a smartphone since then: A phone that can’t call anybody, install apps or take pictures.
Obama also had a phone that he used to tweet, The Associated Press notes, but he rarely hit send on a Tweet himself, and never without coordinating with his staff. The report also said that Obama moved from BlackBerry to an iPhone that let him send and receive emails from a limited group of people and browse the internet.
Unlike Trump, Obama wasn’t known to place or receive calls on his own phone, and all calls were routed through the official White House switchboard instead.
