NVIDIA just announced that ZTE will be the first smartphone maker to offer its brand new Tegra 4 processor, not to be confused with the new Tegra 4i, and that the phone will make its debut in China during the first half of this year. As a refresher, the Tegra 4 chip offers 72 GeForce cores for graphics processing, a quad-core ARM Cortex A15 CPU and support for 4G LTE voice and data where available when paired witht eh firm’s NVIDIA i500 processor.

ZTE says the first Tegra 4 phone will be one of several that the company will launch in the future. “We’re proud to continue our pioneering partnership with NVIDIA and are looking forward to offering more Tegra-powered devices, which are defining a new generation of phones offering premium mobile computing experiences,” said ZTE executive vice president and head of the terminal division Mr. He Shiyou. “Our Tegra 4 smartphones will provide full HD entertainment and multimedia experiences that consumers will love.”

 Unfortunately details are still slim on the device itself. We have no idea what other specs will be offered or what the phone will be called. Still, we’re excited to know that Tegra 4 devices are launching in the very near future.