T-Mobile's new ZTE Obsidian costs just $99.99

T-Mobile has announced a new affordable smartphone – the ZTE Obsidian. The handset costs just $99.99 off-contract, making it one of the cheapest Android smartphones available in the US.

Of course, for such a low price we’re not looking at top of the line specifications. The handset features a 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 480×854, resulting in a PPI of 224. Unusually for a US handset, the smartphone is powered by a MediaTek MT6735M SoC, which is a quad-core CPU clocked at 1GHz and it compares quite favorably with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410.

The Obsidian also comes with 1GB of RAM, a 5 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front facing camera, 4G LTE data connectivity, and a 1,980mAh battery. There’s a limited 4GB of flash memory available to store your stuff on, but this can be expanded through a microSD card slot. The phone also runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. The specifications might not be as high-end as ZTE’s new Axon smartphone for the US market, but there’s everything you’ll need if you’re on a budget.

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At just $99.99, the cost effective smartphones stacks up relatively well with the similarly priced Moto E (2^nd gen). T-Mobile is also offering the smartphone on a payment plan of just $4.17 per month over 24 months. The ZTE Obsidian will be available from August 13^th through T-Mobile online and hardware stores.