Home - News , TracFone - TracFone Launches First US Market Android Flip Phone at Best Buy

The first Android flip phone to be sold in the US is here. TracFone's ZTE Cymbal is now available from Best Buy at the early adopter price of $99.99. We first covered the Cymbal when TracFone posted documentation for it on the web last month . It showed up on the Best Buy site on Sunday but it wasn't possible to actually order it until today.Other than having a flip phone form factor, the Cymbal is a typical entry-level Android phone with a nameless quad-core processor, 3.5 inch 320 x 480px screen, 8 GB (3 GB usable) of internal memory, 1 GB of RAM and Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. There's a memory card slot, a 5 MP camera and a removable battery. The Cymbal runs on the Verizon network and there's LTE support.The ZTE Cymbal is quite large for a flip phone at 4.72" high, 2.40" wide x 0.72" thick. Compared with the Classic Motorola RAZR V3, the Cymbal is 9/10 of an inch taller, 3/10" wider and 2/10" thicker. On the other hand, at 3.5 inches, the screen is small when compared with most current phones. That's not unusably small, the iPhone 4s screen is the same size, but the screen size is something to be aware of if you have large hands or poor vision. While there is a roomy physical keyboard, it's only used for dialing phone numbers, the smallish on screen QWERTY keyboard is used for texting and other text entry.Incidentally, there are a couple of errors in Best Buy's specs for the Cymbal. According to Best Buy, there's no memory card slot or touchscreen. Both are wrong, the phone's tutorial and manual have instructions for inserting a memory card and using the touch screen.For more about the ZTE Cymbal see TracFone's interactive tutorial and User Guide Sources: TracFone