The latest ZTE Cymbal-T just became available for the US market and if you’re wondering what’s up with that, what is a ZTE and what a Cymbal has to do with anything droid-related, well, keep reading, you’re in for a big surprise. The idea is that the new ZTE Cymbal-T is a homage to last decade’s most beloved (and hugely popular) flip phones. Ten years ago, the likes of Motorola RAZR were all the rage, razer thin clamshells that is. Today the options for flip-phone nostalgic customers are very, but very limited to a couple of smartphones made by Samsung.

But the good news is that ZTE has joined the ranks of flip-smartphone manufacturers with their new Cymbal-T which can be best described as a clamshell with a brain and a cool design. Of course I am just pulling your strings, but the truth is that the ZTE Cymbal-T is an interesting and cheap smartphone in a cool clamshell factor, running Android and it was officially launched for the US market.

Unlike its Samsung-made brethren, the ZTE Cymbal-T is by no means a high end smartphone, quite the contrary. The device has a 3.5” wide display and it’s pretty basic, running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 system on chip, which is a quad-core variety of the lowest denomination though, with just 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of native storage capacity. As you can see, there are no bells and whistles to speak of, as the ZTE Cymbal-T’s main selling point is represented by a retro design and a cool idea.

The droid has LTE connectivity though, together with Wi-Fi and GPS, not to mention 2 low end cameras, a 5 MP and a 2 MP respectively. There’s also a petite external screen for displaying notifications, which is as old school as they come. The latest ZTE runs on an old version of Android, the Lollipop, and despite its dated software and far from impressive hardware, it can do pretty much anything it’s required from a basic droid nowadays, but don’t expect miracles. The price is $99 contract free and you can get it from TracFone. For the $99, you’ll also get data, minutes and messages for a whole year.

sources: ZTE, HSN, Best Buy via PhoneScoop