Much to President Trump’s content, the Unplugged company – that makes the special UP Phone – will return to the US, as Reuters reports. The manufacturing process shall start as early as this fall in Nevada.
I’m not mentioning Trump here for no reason. The current White House administration has been pushing for domestic manufacturing, which got Apple to promise to spend billions and billions of dollars in the US, as we told you the other day.
Unplugged Chief executive Joe Weil, who previously worked at Apple, said the move is aimed at keeping the privacy-focused handset’s price under $1,000 even with higher labor costs.
The current model, built in Indonesia, sells for $989. Because of the wage difference between Indonesia and the USA, it’s going to be one hell of a challenge keeping it at similar levels.
Unplugged will start with US-based assembly and gradually work toward sourcing more components domestically. The company chose a former refurbishing firm that has expanded into assembly work, but Weil declined to identify the partner or disclose production numbers, investor names, or funding totals.
Building smartphones in the US remains rare because most of the supply chain is in Asia and labor costs are significantly higher in America. However, the White House has been pressuring technology companies, including Apple, to increase US production through tariffs and other measures.
Unplugged hopes to control costs by producing steady, smaller batches instead of releasing a new model every year. The latest UP Phone, available for preorder and set to ship in late September, comes with one year of Unplugged’s privacy suite – featuring tracker blocking, a VPN, and encrypted photo storage – before switching to a $12.99 monthly subscription. The updated model uses the same hardware as the 2024 version but adds a new interface, firewall dashboard, and improved camera software.
The UP Phone is built with privacy as its core focus, its creators underscore. Its firewall blocks connections to more than 225,000 known data-harvesting servers, while its custom UnpluggedOS (based on the Android Open Source Project) removes all Google services and their associated surveillance systems, yet still supports most Android-compatible apps.
A no-logs VPN hides the user’s IP address from websites and apps, and system-level sensor controls let users block microphone, camera, Bluetooth, and other hardware access. For browsing, the device comes preloaded with Brave, enabling private, AI-assisted research directly on the phone.
