ZTE

The summer months tend to deliver modest models like Thursday's announcement of the ZTE Obsidian for T-Mobile.

Arriving August 13, the value-priced Obsidian is a starter Android phone with low-end hardware. It comes with a 4.5-inch display with 854x480-pixel resolution, and a low-powered 1GHz quad-core processor with 1GB RAM.

The camera is essentially the same situation; the rear houses a 5-megapixel shooter while the front serves up a 2-megapixel sensor for selfies (hey, it's probably better than a 0.3-megapixel shooter, so there's that).

Toss in 4GB of internal storage with microSD support for up to 32GB of space for good measure.

On a positive note, the Obsidian is powered by the most recent version of Android, 5.1 Lollipop.

Additionally, it does support 4G LTE as well as T-Mobile's Wi-Fi calling.

T-Mobile will sell the ZTE Obsidian for an all-in cost of $100. Customers can spread equipment costs for $4.17 per month over two years.