14 DAY TRIAL // ZTE is already present on the U.S. market, but the Chinese handset maker is mostly known for its cheap devices rather than its flagships. Some of the company's high-end devices like the Axon lineup have been well received in the U.S.
The latest smartphone launched by ZTE in the United States is the Cymbal-T, a low-end Android device that features a now unusual clamshell form factor. However, that shouldn't matter that much since there's a huge market for entry-level smartphones as well.
The good news is the ZTE Cymbal-T will be available in the U.S. for just $99.95 outright. The phone will be available via Home Shopping Network, Best Buy, as well as Walmart stores.
It's also worth noting that the Cymbal-T sells on TracFone for $99.99 and you won't need to sign up for a new contract in order to get one. On top of that, TracFone offers customers 1 year of service with 1200MB of data, 1200 minutes, and 1200 messages for one year, included in the phone's price.
Since the Cymbal-T is a fairly basic device, Android fans shouldn't expect any impressive features. In fact, the phone doesn't even come with a rather recent version of Android.
According to ZTE, the Cymbal-T ships with Android 5.1 Lollipop on board, and we don't think there will be any major OS updates available in the future.
Spec-wise, ZTE's low-end clamshell sports a 3.5-inch display, along with a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a secondary 2-megapixel secondary camera in the front.
Under the hood, the Cymbal-T packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 32GB via microSD card.
When it comes to connectivity, ZTE's entry-level handset does its job admirably, since the phone features 4G LTE support, as well as Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. No word on battery capacity though.
