On Tuesday (Aug. 28), MetroPCS ,the sixth most popular U.S. cellular carrier, announced the launch of its Coolpad Quattro 4G, a mid-range LTE-enabled Android smartphone.

The Quattro 4G is Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad's first U.S. phone. The Shenzhen-based Coolpad is an established name in the Asian smarthphone market and specializes in dual-mode handsets, which incorporate two different radio technologies.

"As the original inventor of the dual-mode, dual-standby handset, we bring a lot of expertise to the table," said Nick Chen, president of Coolpad Americas. "For this first handset, we really focused on getting good modem performance."

MetroPCS is yet to reveal any official images of the Coolpad Quattro 4G. However, the smartphone is expected to sport a 4-inch capacitive multi-touchscreen and will weigh 3.32 ounces. A single-core 1GHz processor (with 512MB of RAM) will power the device. The smatphone will also feature a 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing VGA one. The Quattro 4G will pack a1,600mAh battery that offers up to 3 hours of talk time. It will also have 133MB internal storage, and a microSD card with expandable memory option of up to 32GB.

According to PCMag "MetroPCS is looking into whether the Quattro can be upgraded to voice-over-LTE (VoLTE)."

The smartphone will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G LTE connectivity options. The Gingerbread OS seems like a primitive option when most other smartphone makers are looking to upgrade from ICS to Jelly Bean. However, the company is of the opinion the Gingerbread is an inexpensive and reliable option for its mass market devices.

"We certainly jump on the latest Android versions very quickly on our mid-tier and high-tier devices, but for the mass-market devices, we're more conservative," said Nick Chen.

Coolpad's president Nick Chen is confident of the device's U.S. success and averred that the U.S. line will be 100 percent Android.

"We're well known for building premium smartphone devices," said Chen. "Our high-end devices compete with Samsung and HTC. Typically when we launch our flagship high-end devices, we price those slightly higher than the highest-end Galaxy device and we still do very well."

The company is also looking at other carriers in the near future, but MetroPCS is its first target. The Coolpad Quattro 4G is priced at $99 (no contract).