Is This Free Phone a SCAM? Here's the Truth | Mode Mobile

So Austin Evans, the YouTuber, dropped a video calling our business, Anmode Mobile, as a whole, a scam.

Ouch.

Words can hurt too, Austin. And look, I get it. This is not a knock on Austin or his review of us. That's his job. Austin's a very successful tech YouTuber, creator, and influencer. But I wanted to make this video to respond to some of his findings. To him, earning a few bucks a month sounds like nothing. But here's the thing. Austin's not our target user, and that is completely okay. But for millions of real people around the world, Mode is changing people's lives. So let's go through this point by point, show you the real data, and introduce you to some of our actual users.

Cool?

Let's go. First, let me explain what Mode Mobile actually is. We turn smartphones into earning tools for people who need it most. We're talking in 170 countries and over 50 million registered users with over $1 billion in earnings and savings back to everyday people. With Mode, you get paid doing things on your phone to do the things that you already do. That could be listening to music, playing games, reading the news, charging your phone, or giving your insights for just being human. You can download our app for free, or you can use one of our devices. Essentially, brands pay us and we share that revenue back with you. It's a more equitable model, and instead of trillions of dollars going back to the biggest platforms in the world, you get to share in a little bit of upside from it. See, what seems like just a few bucks to someone like Austin can literally buy groceries, pay bills, and cover school fees for families worldwide. Mode Mobile isn't a means of about getting rich, and it's not meant to replace your everyday job, at least not yet. And we don't even need to replace your full phone. If you're happy with your current phone, you can actually just download our app for free. You don't have to pay a membership. It's a free app, and we pay you, not the other way around. Our focus is on consumers who are trying to make ends meet. Countless Americans and non-Americans are down on their luck and don't know where to start. We focus heavily on the people who are most susceptible to being affected by consistent economic shifts. Those at a real risk of being left behind in an AI-driven world. This wealth gap is widening every single day. We believe in teaching a person how to fish. Consistency, skills, and opportunities compound over time. The smartphone is now the most powerful distribution layer for change in modern history, with people spending nearly half of their waking hours on their phone, and this will only increase over time. At the end of the day, 56% of Americans today don't have $1,000 in their bank account. 56%. And that was as of 2022 when times were good. It's even worse today. And here at Mode, we're providing accessible passive income through your everyday phone use, helping you make something using the thing you're already using. That's the mission. Now let's tackle Austin's concerns head on. You're making a dollar per hour? Okay, tiny earnings. Let's break down the actual math. This is Matthew from the USA. Through Mode, he earned— this does not include savings— he earned $16,719. And this is not by working 100 hours like Austin suggested, but by doing what they did every single day: streaming, gaming, charging his phone. In addition to this, we made sure to find users who did not refer millions of customers in the so-called pyramid scheme. We found people that actually earned from doing the things they actually do, and Matthew's an example of someone that we pulled directly from our analytics. $25 a week equals about $100 a month. That's enough to pay for your Netflix, your internet, or your phone service, rideshares. And over 30 years compounded at 7% a year annually equals $113,000. And here's the kicker. That's just earnings per week. That doesn't take in consideration like savings. We help people maximize what they do have, not what they don't. We've collectively facilitated this earnings and savings to millions of people around the world, and that's not tiny. That's real value going to everyday people, exactly who we focus on. So yeah, if you're making 7 figures on YouTube reviewing tech, this probably isn't for you. But for everyday budget-conscious Americans, students, gig workers, and people in emerging markets, this could be genuinely valuable. We value transparency. Oh my God. The free phone subscription. Austin's right, it's not technically free upfront. Let me explain to you how it actually works. What were people buying when they bought one of our Earn Club memberships? To get our free phone, they had to subscribe to our Earn Club Max. Think of Earn Club Max like a gym membership. You pay for access to premium earning tools and bonuses. You pay a monthly fee, you unlock a membership. That means that you effectively get faster earning. It's completely optional. You don't even need to pay for it. You can just download our app if you don't want to pay for it or don't have the money. See, for committed users who engage with the platform, the math works. You're not paying for a phone. You're unlocking earning multipliers, bonus rewards, and premium features that will help you earn faster. And it's helping people learn the idea of investing. When you buy something that you can know that you can earn more later, people like to do that. Many active users recoup that monthly fee in well under 30 days, which is why we enable earning for their account immediately, and they're able to start earning on their current device without our actual free phone. In the past, any time delays in shipping devices were done to ensure fraudulent users did not take away devices from authentic users. This was actually a major problem for us as a company, and we didn't have a great solution to figure it out. And we found that a delay would allow us to get a notification from credit card companies that the payment was not flagged as fraud. And this allows the system to continue operating as planned without taking phones from actual authentic users. The real benefit of the membership is EarnClub's faster earning and perks, and the fact you get a new updated phone annually. Austin decided not to mention any of that. This ensures we're rewarding loyal users, not people who grab a phone and ghost and effectively steal from the broader community. It's about sustainability and integrity, and it was also a pilot program. It's something that we were testing out to see if we can scale and be the first ever company to make phones free without any government subsidies. But even if you don't have one of our phones or you don't have the money and you don't want to buy for it, you can actually just download our app along with 50 million other people who have seen this value proposition and did just that. That's fine. It's very plastic, like— Phone quality. Look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that this is an iPhone. It's really not an iPhone. And we're not trying to be an iPhone. Every tech reviewer is going to hate the original Earn Phone device, and they're going to hate our second Earn Phone device too, because they are not our target market. But it's a damn good phone for what it is. It's cheaper than a steak dinner and wine, Austin's microphone in his studios, and more than half the price of his Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses he's wearing in the video. We first made it in 2022, and in order to keep costs low and earning high, we kept the original model up until last year. Funny enough, Earn Phone 2 is now fully sold out at every retailer across the country— Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and so on. So despite everything, people clearly resonated with the concept. So the Earn Phone was built for accessibility and earning integration, not flagship specs. It ran an older version of Android with our custom Earn OS UI that makes earning seamless, automatic, and faster. Austin mentioned no SIM card, and that's intentional. Keeping it SIM-free means no carrier lock-in, meaning that you could use it on any GSM carrier. It keeps the cost lower. It was actually dual SIM, so you could actually run two carriers at once and had global compatibility. And you can just use it on Wi-Fi to earn if you can't afford phone service for whatever reason, which is often a big problem for our community. We are a software company first and foremost. We are not a hardware company. We happen to make the Earn Phone and make tens of thousands of units. And at the end of the day, it's about our priorities. We chose reliable and affordable over cutting edge and expensive. Our goal was to get a pinpoint of data to understand what would the market be interested in and how would they use this device. And what's interesting is that you can see that we have a 4.5 out of 5 rating on the App Store. So users tend to agree that the product is working, especially when you have 3.2 million overall reviews. Yeah, that's the earning model. Austin called it predatory. Let's clarify something crucial here. Everything is optional. You don't need to do it if you don't want to. Everything is optional, including watching this video or subscribing to this channel, although it would be appreciated very much if you did. Charging rewards, optional. Music playback, optional. Games, optional. You control how you earn. You don't need to use the Earn Phone to earn. You can use the Earn app and you can transform your phone into an Earn Phone. And here's the link exactly to do that, and it's free. So a lot of people wonder, how does our business model actually work? Well, here's how it works. Advertisers pay Mo to show opportunities for you to take advantage of. We share that revenue with you, the user. It's a very transparent value exchange. I give you an example. Say a game company pays us $10. What do they want is you to play their game and get deeper and deeper into their level and ultimately become a habitual user of that product. We then reward you per minute that you play that game., and as you get to different levels and milestones and do in-app purchases, you may earn more rewards along the way. Mode will then take half of that revenue. So a very simplistic model of this, it's just like Uber. Uber pays you a fee to drive for Uber. You pick up people, Uber takes some of that revenue because it facilitated that, and you keep some of the revenue for being the worker on the other end. But here's the thing, with Uber, not every single person has a call are. But the people that do, yes, they are going to earn more than they are using our product. But almost every single person has a phone. In fact, there's 7 billion of them around the world. Anyways, back to earning. Those requirements like minimum volume for music, that prevents abuse because if people fraud our system, then it hurts earnings for everyone else because advertisers are paying for that. We need to ensure that this is real engagement, not bots. That are trying to game our system because some creators flood their engagements on videos with bots to boost the numbers. Unlike ad farms that keep all the money, we share it fairly.

And the proof?

Over $1 billion in earnings and savings across our community. And that's not predatory. That's a legitimate business model that benefits users who opt in. But the dollar is just part of the story. I'd rather focus on the 3.2 million reviews with a 4.5-star rating and the 60,000 shareholders that believe in Mode and its broader mission. Many of whom aren't even consumers of our own product. People that just see the bigger vision. That's over half of the amount of people who watched Austin put an old console in a fish tank for some odd reason. Get 25% when your referrals refer a friend.

Fact.

Could you look up the definition of a pyramid scheme and read it out for me real quick here? Referrals. The big scary pyramid scheme acquisition. Let's talk about how referral programs actually work. Uber, Robinhood, Dropbox, Cash App. These apps all have referral bonuses. Are they pyramid schemes? No, they're standard growth tools. Mo's referral system is capped and tied to real activity. You earn when friends you refer use the app and they earn themselves. It's not an endless recruitment. It's community building, much like a YouTuber asking his or her fans to share their content to their community. And in fact, here's the exact breakdown of user-associated earnings with referrals. It's less than 7%. Pyramid schemes collapse when recruitment stops. Mode has been around for years. 50 million registered users, consistent payouts, no collapse. We've been operating for years with complete regulatory compliance and now acquiring more apps into the broader ecosystem. If you think our business is built on a pyramid, you should go look at our audited financial statements and offering docs on the SEC website. Once again, here are audited financials showing pro forma revenue of nearly $12 million in EBITDA and $40 million in revenue amongst our properties in 2025 alone. What they're trying to say is because they went from basically not existing as a company to actually making some money, they've experienced a 32,481% growth. You know, last time I had a 32,481% growth, my doctor told me I should get it looked at. The investor pitch. Okay, this one needs context. That 32,480% growth metric, it's from our verified beginning. We had about $100,000 of annual revenue on our first year of revenue in 2019. When you start small, percentages growth look astronomical. That's just math, and it's an impressive number. Our revenue grew quite a lot between 2019 and 2022, which allowed us to hit that 32,481% growth rate and ultimately be recognized as Deloitte's number one fastest growing company in 2023. And I'm the founder trying to showcase our growth and value proposition to potential investors. Take anything out of context and it might seem silly or ludicrous, but this is not. And fortunately for us, it was all verified by Deloitte, one of the largest accounting companies in the world. Our metrics are audited— real revenue from real advertisers and real partnerships. We've raised over $70 million through several regulated offerings, Reg A, Reg CF, Reg D, seed round. That's $70 million from people around the world that believe in our vision. But you know what? Instead of me talking, let's hear from the people Mode actually serves. I can't believe it, man. You guys are awesome. You reward your customers and then you just rewarded me a lot.

My daughter, she's the most important person in my life. She's going to be getting married next month, actually, and I'm I'm able to afford the suit that I'm about to buy. You know, I'm able to go walk her down the aisle.

And how much do you normally earn per week?

I can make $60.

Between $50 and $75.

About $40.

I just got paid $20. I can usually cash out $105 every 4 or 5 weeks. The easiest way to earn money or points in the app is charging the phone.

If you just consistently play music that you like, you're consistently earning.

I get a lot of email. Hey, here's a chance to get 20,000 points. I'll take advantage of the time. So like if you read 15 news articles, you get, I don't know, 100 extra points.

And then when I get home, I do the earn per minutes. On games, if you complete just one task of a deal, you can get almost 6,000 points a day.

It's actually helping me to cover my bills. So I kind of use it to have nice things. I do pay bills with that. It's the most easy. I'm not going to tell you that Mo Mobile is a scam, but what I will tell you is that something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, you know, it might just be a duck. Austin's final verdict was basically not illegal, or a scam, but not worth it. And from his perspective, I totally get it. But here's what he's missing. Mode is not for tech enthusiasts with studio setups and million subscriber channels. We're for the 6.8 billion people a year who are earning less than $12,000 a year, the 18% of people globally who live in poverty despite being employed, and the 56% of Americans that don't have $1,000 in their savings. We're for hourly employees, students, gig economy workers, 170 countries, 50 million registered users, $1 billion in earnings and savings, 4.5-star rating from millions of people. These numbers don't lie. Real people are earning real money and improving their lives. Look, I respect Austin. He makes very clickable content. It's not easy to grow a following to as large as he has, and the skepticism is healthy. But calling something a scam without understanding the target audience or the global context that misses the point entirely and negatively affects our business. Just like the broader media industry today, reporting with misleading clickbait to create clicks and more revenue, which is ironic given that the same criticism Austin has to us is the exact same reason he makes money when people click on his videos. Ads pay for that. And in this case, your attention, your attention pays for Austin's lifestyle. And YouTube's bottom line. The more video he makes slamming products, the more money he makes. Probably would be great if you could earn some of that money too, huh? We did a quick check on Austin's YouTube page after he made our video, and we found over 10 more videos on his channel that were insinuating a product is a scam. Everyone has their hustle, and I respect it, but it's funny that you, Austin, make a living from fearmongering under the guise of testing out technology. It's hell of a way to make a living in 2026, am I right? In his review of our product, it takes him 19 minutes and 9 seconds to tell viewers that Mode Mobile isn't a scam, but he's already misled people enough to think it is. Mode isn't perfect. It has its kinks, without a doubt. It's still evolving into what our vision is for it. No platform started out perfect in the beginning, but we're transparent about how we work, how we pay out,, and we're generally trying to democratize income in a world where traditional jobs aren't always accessible and unemployment will continue to skyrocket in the world of AI. And when you have tens of millions of people using your product, there are gonna be some complaints along the way, but we're doing our best and we're a growing company and it's clearly going somewhat well despite what Austin says. Austin, if you're watching, I'd love to invite you to actually talk to our users. Talk to the people using our service, not cherry-pick things to crap on our website that you think are silly. When you have tens of millions of people using your service, there are going to be some complaints. These are all things that we take seriously and try to address. But if you actually visit the communities where Mode is making an impact, you might be able to actually see that there is value from their perspective, not just through the lens of someone who already has financial security. And to everyone watching, if you're curious whether Mode Mobile is right for you, try it risk-free. Download the app, explore the features, and see if it fits your lifestyle. It's 100% free. You don't need to sign up for any paid memberships or any free phones or anything of that nature. We're not asking you to quit your job or even invest your life savings if you are even thinking about investing in the company. But if you do want to invest in the company, you can check out the links on our website to find more about that opportunity. At the end of the day, we're just offering a tool that turns your everyday phone into a supplemental income stream. For some people, that's generally valuable. For others, it might not be, and that's totally fine. But don't let one tech reviewer's opinion stop you from exploring something that could actually help you. Millions of people have already used our service, and maybe you'll be next. Links to download the Mod Earn app are below. Check out our verified payment proofs, read real user reviews, and make your own informed decision. If you're interested in becoming an investor, please go to our website and you can even claim free shares with no risk. And to Austin's team, I hope you claim your free shares anytime you're ready. At Moad, we believe in giving people access to opportunities. We're all about Main Street and Moad is one of them. So use our service, claim free shares. At the end of the day, thanks for watching. I'm grateful for your time. God bless.