Tweet ZTE, best known for its pocket friendly Android devices in the smartphone market, is a constantly-expanding company that is seeking to change its image with slightly more powerful flagship devices. The 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen smartphone retails @ Merimobiles for only $349.99? And you can (or will) only get that from ZTE (or, presumably, its competitor, Huawei). It was first seen during (MWC) in Barcelona in February, although without much excitement. Back then, ZTE representatives never said anything about its retailing price or a release date. But thank God we have it now.

Dubbed the Skate, the Android 2.3 smartphone houses a generous 4.3-inch display (2592×1944 pixels), and is powered by an unspecified 800MHz processor plus an almost immediate-obsolete Adreno 200 GPU. You’ll also notice a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash on the back, in conjunction with the usual Bluetooth, A-GPS, and WiFi bundle. Regretfully, the listed cellular frequencies show that the Skate won’t be seen in the US market any time soon, which is somewhat ironic given ZTE’s craving to enter into the North American consumer market this year. On the contrary, perhaps the Chinese giant has some surprises for us, and who doesn’t like surprises when you touch on technology?

Apart from the abovementioned touchscreen, you get 512 MB of RAM, and a 1400 mAh battery. Oh, not forgetting Android 2.3 Gingerbread. That leaves us optimistic that the Skate can run broad range of apps, gathering not only the profoundly customization needs of operators, but also user-friendly UI and expedient, powerful multimedia features. And at least also some OS updates will take place here – given that the OS isn’t customized at all.

All in all, this may be the most affordable midrange Android smartphone left for this year, if performance is taken into consideration and with no major bugs. Well, even if more releases see the light of the day; for example,  even Nokia’s new CEO Stephen Elop can’t stand the pressure, how the company is being attacked from all fronts, in the high end – Apple’s stress, in the mid range from Android, and finally the growing demand of Chinese clone devices at the bottom. In this new era where exactly are they going to add value? With past great margins, are now mere memories; and ZTE doesn’t seem worry about this. It’s the others who are feeling the pain.

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