Pool, Getty Images 
 
 Who's got two thumbs and a Secret Service-approved phone to tweet from? 
 
 On arriving in Washington on Thursday ahead of his inauguration, Donald Trump handed in his Android device in exchange for an unidentified locked-down phone, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 The phone comes with a new number that is known only to a limited number of people. This marks a big change for Trump, who's frequently on the line with friends, business contacts, reporters, foreign leaders and politicians. 
 
 Larry Johnson, who worked at the Secret Service from 1982 to 2006, said a smartphone given to a president would have extremely limited uses. "It's not really good for much," he said. 
 
 It's possible Trump's Twitter account would be operated from another phone, said Johnson, who now works as an executive at cybersecurity company CyberSponse. 
 
 But that's not where the phone's limitations would end. "You can't make a phone call, because it's too easy to be intercepted," Johnson said. "I can scare you with how easy it is." 
 
 The Secret Service declined to comment for this story. 
 
 Now playing: Watch this: Trump trades in Android for a mystery phone 
 
 Barack Obama was the first president to use a mobile device approved by security agencies because of hacking concerns. Initially he had a heavily modified BlackBerry and later switched to another phone that had most features disabled. He was not known to use it for making or receiving calls, but it was one of few devices that had access to the @POTUS Twitter account. 
 
 Trump said earlier this week that he will keep using his existing Twitter account to communicate on social media, in addition the the @POTUS account. 
 
 Originally published Jan. 20, 2017 3:24 a.m. PT 
 
 Update, 10:50 a.m. PT: Added comment from retired Secret Service agent Larry Johnson. 
 
 What does a Trump presidency mean for tech? Some say it might not be as bad you think. Others say his potential influence on the industry is "alarming." 
 
 Life, disrupted: In Europe, millions of refugees are still searching for a safe place to settle. Tech should be part of the solution. But is it? CNET investigates. ||||| WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump arrived in Washington the day before his inauguration as the nation’s 45th president in a swirl of cinematic pageantry but facing serious questions about whether his chaotic transition has left critical parts of the government dangerously short-handed. 
 
 Mr. Trump will be sworn in at noon Eastern time on Friday, but his team was still scrambling to fill key administration posts when he got here on Thursday, announcing last-minute plans to retain 50 essential State Department and national security officials currently working in the Obama administration to ensure “continuity of government,” according to Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary. 
 
 The furious final staff preparations included designating Thomas A. Shannon Jr., an Obama appointee, as the acting secretary of state, pending the expected confirmation of Rex W. Tillerson. 
 
 As of Thursday, only two of Mr. Trump’s 15 cabinet nominees — John F. Kelly, to head the Department of Homeland Security, and his nominee for defense secretary, Gen. James N. Mattis — had been approved by congressional committees and were close to assuming their posts. 
 
 In all, Mr. Trump has named only 29 of his 660 executive department appointments, according to the Partnership for Public Service, which has been tracking the process. That is a pace far slower than recent predecessors, falling far short of the schedule originally outlined by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who was Mr. Trump’s transition director before Mr. Trump ousted him 10 weeks ago. 
 
 None of this seemed to bother Mr. Trump. After arriving from New York, the president-elect trod solemnly down red-carpeted stairs from a government plane at Joint Base Andrews with his wife, Melania, then sped off to deliver a speech at a reception held at his ornate new hotel near the White House. There, he declared, with typical bluster, that his cabinet nominees had “by far the highest I.Q. of any cabinet assembled.” 
 
 Later, he laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery and attended his Lincoln Memorial inaugural concert, saying that one had never been held there before even though many similar events have taken place in front of the iconic seated statue of the 16th president. 
 
 “Tomorrow seems to be the big one,” Mr. Trump told a black-tie dinner crowd at Washington’s stately Union Station on Thursday night, referring to his inauguration. In off-the-cuff remarks, he teased his incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, for having a difficult-to-pronounce name, and chided fund-raisers who did not contribute to his campaign until after he won. He also described his political opponents as “going crazy” over his cabinet selections. 
 
 Mr. Trump campaigned on a platform of shaking up Washington, but his pomp-and-circumstance arrival began with two jarring concessions to a city he may not inhabit full time: This week, he was forced to abandon his cherished “Trump” 757 for an Air Force jet, and, according to people close to the transition, he has traded in his Android phone for a secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service with a new number that few people possess. 
 
 The official rationale was security. But some of Mr. Trump’s new aides, who have often been blindsided when a reporter, outside adviser or officeseeker dialed the president-elect directly, expressed relief. Several of them, however, expect the new president to satisfy his compulsion for continuous communication by calling outsiders and by tramping from office to office in search of gossip and sounding boards. 
 
 Mr. Trump’s management style places unique strains on his top advisers, including Mr. Priebus, who is stepping into what is traditionally a gatekeeper’s post that has involved restricting the flow of people and paper to the Oval Office. 
 
 Mr. Priebus is navigating a West Wing crowded with powerful figures in their own right, including the president-elect’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who will always outweigh anyone else regardless of title; the chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon; the counselor Kellyanne Conway; Vice President-elect Mike Pence; and the economic adviser Gary Cohn, the blunt former Goldman Sachs executive who is rising fast in Mr. Trump’s circle. 
 
 In a conference call with incoming staff this week, Mr. Priebus informed midlevel aides that they should avoid interacting with Mr. Trump without his permission, that they were prohibited from talking to the news media, and that they should carefully restrict their social media posts, according to two people with knowledge of the call. 
 
 On Thursday, aides released names of more than a dozen appointments to the White House staff. Most of them had worked for Mr. Priebus at the R.N.C. Mr. Trump also named a friend, Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, to be ambassador to Britain. 
 
 Thursday’s hires notwithstanding, the halting pace of transition has alarmed senior Obama administration officials and some Republican lawmakers, who have repeatedly complained about the Trump team’s unwillingness to coordinate transition planning with them. 
 
 Since his election on Nov. 8, Mr. Trump has had little interest in the minutiae of his transition, saying it was “bad karma” to get too involved, according to a person who spoke with him at the time. At one point, he wanted to halt the planning altogether, out of superstition, the person said. 
 
 “In 21 years of covering the State Department and in eight years of serving there, I’ve seen rocky transitions and experienced what feels like a hostile takeover, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, and a former journalist and Bill Clinton administration official. 
 
 For weeks, transition officials and people close to the process have suggested that the delays are the fault of Mr. Christie, accusing him of botching the preparations during seven months of transition preparation. 
 
 But copies of Mr. Christie’s plan, some of which were reviewed by The New York Times, were circulated in weekly installments to the transition team before his ouster and were discussed at weekly meetings. They revealed thorough blueprints on a range of core planning issues, from the pace of the transition to what the president-elect’s daily schedule should look like, even 100-day and 200-day plans of action. 
 
 Each sheet detailing the “landing teams” arriving at agencies had a notation on which advisers had weighed in on the selections. 
 
 On the list the day of the election was a Senate nomination and confirmation plan, a first-100-days agenda to take to Congress, members of landing teams and their status and interest in jobs at key departments, and a suggested schedule for Mr. Trump that included the presidential daily briefing each day and key meetings. 
 
 The work was not fully completed; some pages, such as the landing team list for the Small Business Administration, were half-filled and had no input from senior advisers. The work was hobbled by the concern that most Republican policy officials had about working for their nominee. 
 
 And Mr. Christie’s decision to put some of his own top allies on lists for prime jobs did not wear well with Mr. Trump’s team. 
 
 Still, there was thought put into the transition and what would come next, including a draft of dozens of executive orders and recommendations for a communications plan to avoid “idle” time in the president-elect’s schedule that the news media would use to describe him as unfocused. There were proposed themes for each week, to lend a “cadence” to the transition. 
 
 The suggested schedule called for completing cabinet appointments by the first week of December, taking care of the under secretaries and deputies the second week, and naming ambassadors by the third week, just before the holidays. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — A few hours after President-elect Donald Trump was briefed by intelligence officials about Russian meddling in the election, an Associated Press reporter called his cellphone seeking an interview. 
 
 The call went to voicemail and the reporter did not leave a message. About an hour later, Trump called back. 
 
 It's hard to imagine many politicians — particularly one about to become president of the United States — calling back an unknown number on their cellphone. 
 
 With Trump, it's simply how business gets done, whether he's fielding calls from real estate partners and longtime friends or foreign leaders and congressional lawmakers in the weeks after the election. 
 
 But as Trump prepares to take the oath of office Friday, the future of his ever-present Android smartphone is now a matter of national security. On Thursday, he told a friend that he had given up his phone, as security agencies had urged him to do. It was unclear whether he was following the lead of President Barack Obama, the nation's first cellphone-toting president, who exchanged his personal device for a Blackberry heavily modified for security purposes. 
 
 The friend who spoke with Trump spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity in order to disclose the private conversation. 
 
 The presidency has long been a lonely, isolating office, with security concerns keeping the commander in chief at a distance from the public. Under Obama, worries about cyber intrusions — particularly by foreign governments — pulled the president's technology deeper into the security bubble as well. Many of the functions on Obama's Blackberry were blocked and only a handful of people had his phone number or email address. 
 
 Trump doesn't email, but he uses his phone to tweet — something he's made clear he plans to continue in office. He's known to make calls early in the morning and late at night, often seeking input from multiple sources when making a decision. Sometimes he leaves a voicemail. 
 
 Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax and a friend of the president-elect, described Trump's phone etiquette, as "just like one of his speeches, it's very stream of consciousness." 
 
 Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., called Trump "amazingly accessible," saying the president-elect picks up his phone even when he doesn't know who is calling. 
 
 "My phone says, No Caller ID, so I'm not saying that it has anything to do with me," Corker said. "Nobody knows who it is that's calling when I'm calling." 
 
 Foreign leaders and diplomats took advantage of Trump's accessibility in the days after his election as they scrambled to find ways to reach him. Some called into Trump Tower hoping to be transferred to the president-elect's office. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull got Trump's cellphone number from the golfer Greg Norman. 
 
 Trump's accessibility can create headaches for his aides, who can't always control who he's speaking to or what he's saying. After actress Meryl Streep blasted Trump during a Golden Globes speech earlier this month, a New York Times reporter called the president-elect at midnight to get a response. Trump's criticism of Streep dominated the news the following day, overshadowing his team's planned agenda. 
 
 For Obama, getting to use a Blackberry in office was considered a victory. He later switched to an iPhone that allowed him to send and receive email from a limited group of people, surf websites and read the news. 
 
 But Obama wasn't known to use his cellphone to make or receive telephone calls, according to individuals familiar with his technology use. Even senior government officials didn't have the number and instead reached the president through the White House switchboard. 
 
 The president also used the switchboard to place his calls, said the individuals, who weren't authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. 
 
 Obama had a phone in his control that he used to tweet, one of the only devices with access to the official presidential Twitter feed due to hacking concerns. But Obama rarely hit "send" on a tweet himself, and never without coordinating it with his staff, the individuals said. 
 
 If Trump does get rid of his cellphone, it could end up with a home not far from the White House. 
 
 Curators at the Newseum, which chronicles the First Amendment and the evolution of electronic communication, reached out to Trump's campaign in November about the prospect of acquiring his Android phone. They haven't heard back, said Carrie Christoffersen, the museum's curator of collections. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP writers Julie Bykowicz, Josh Lederman and Ben Nuckols contributed to this report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
– Well, it appears the Secret Service has pried Donald Trump's beloved Android phone from his tweeting fingers. An unidentified friend of Trump's tells the AP the new president handed over his phone Thursday on the advice of security advisers. The New York Times reports Trump's Android was replaced by an encrypted device that received Secret Service approval. Barack Obama, the first president to use a mobile device in office, started with a "heavily modified" Blackberry before moving to a mostly disabled iPhone. The devices were used to check email and news sites but rarely—if ever—for phone calls. This is all likely to cramp Trump's style. A Republican senator says the president was known for answering his phone even if he didn't recognize the number. He would even call back strange numbers that didn't leave a message. A former Secret Service agent tells Cnet Trump is unlikely to be able to use his new device for phone calls because they are way too easy to intercept. Trump's aides—some of whom are excited journalists and others won't have direct access to him—say he's likely to instead go office to office in person to get his "gossip" fix. It's possible he'll still be able to tweet. The Newseum in Washington DC has asked Trump about getting his Android to put on display.