President Obama used someone else’s iPhone to send his first tweet

BY Killian Bell

Published 19 May 2015

President Barack Obama's first tweet

Barack Obama was given his own Twitter account on Monday, six years after becoming President, and he promptly published his first tweet. The greeting was sent from an iPhone, but according to the White House, it wasn’t Obama’s own device.

Shortly after the tweet was published, reports began circulating — mainly from Apple-focused news sites — that claimed Obama was an iPhone user. But it seems that’s not quite the case. Though he did use Apple’s smartphone, it’s not his primary device.

The White House told BuzzFeed that “Obama’s first tweet from the brand-new presidential Twitter account was sent using an iPhone registered to the Executive Office of the President — the government name for the sprawling presidential staff — but was not a device Obama regularly uses.”

Obama’s primary device continues to be a super-secure, government-issue BlackBerry. It’s unclear whether he is able to send tweets from that, or whether the Twitter application is banned, but the President’s BlackBerry is much more restricted than a regular BlackBerry.

“I can’t use phones with recorders in them,” Obama said on Jimmy Kimmel Live back in March. “So a lot of the newfangled stuff, for security reasons, I don’t get.”

Obama has previously revealed he isn’t allowed to use an iPhone for security reasons.

Obama’s administration has long been using Twitter to communicate with U.S. citizens via the @WhiteHouse handle, but not many of the tweets published there were from the President himself. However, Obama appears to have full control over the @POTUS account — at least while he’s in office.

Since sending his first tweet on Monday morning, Obama has already amassed more than 1.64 million followers.