Plenty of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ with the launch of ZTE’s new C88 budget cellphone, the biggest being the fact that, since it’s an exclusive to MetroPCS, you can only pick one up in Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Sarasota, Orlando, LA, San Francisco, Tampa, Detroit, and Sacramento.  Still, it’s notable as the first of what presumably will be a strong US invasion from China’s largest telecom manufacturer, although they’ll hopefully ratchet up the specs in future as a dual-band (850/1900MHz) cellphone with 2-inch screen, basic camera and support for SMS/MMS messaging isn’t going to send a shiver down the spines of Nokia, Motorola and the rest.

Still, for between $129 and $149 you can’t argue too much, and at least the C88 has Bluetooth headset support and a reasonable 60MB of internal memory.  The mail@metro, metro411 and mobile IM apps are embedded, and Sudoku (which I’m secretly addicted to) is preloaded.

As for the looks, well, no beauty contest winner perhaps, but the sombre black should at least fail to unduly offend anybody.

[via Gadgetell]