When ZTE officially took the wraps off of its flagship Grand S smartphone earlier this week, the company said that its new handset would be launching in China in the first quarter of 2013, but it neglected to say whether there was a U.S. launch in the works as well. It turns out that the Grand S will indeed be making its way stateside, as ZTE USA CEO Lixin Cheng has confirmed to CNET that the device will be coming to the U.S. later this year. The exec wouldn't get into details about more specific launch timing or which carrier(s) might offer the Grand S.

ZTE isn't terribly well-known in the U.S., as the only products that we usually see from it are lower-end models and devices that get stripped of their ZTE logos in favor of some carrier branding instead. It looks like that may start changing as ZTE gains more traction with the carriers, though. Cheng explains that the carriers are growing to like ZTE because the company is able to crank out phones faster than many of its competitors, going from design to shelf in 6-8 months rather than 12-18, and because ZTE phones are made at a lower cost that leads to a lower subsidy for the carriers.

The ZTE Grand S is one of several new Android smartphones unveiled recently with a 5-inch 1080p display, but hey, we're not ones to complain about seeing more high-res displays. Also packed in with the Grand S is a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 13-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front cameras, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, microSD slot, and 4G LTE. All of that is wrapped up in a body that measures 6.9mm thick, which is one of the features of the Grand S that ZTE is particularly proud of. There's still a lot up in the air about the Grand S's U.S. travel plans, but it's exciting to learn that we're getting an official launch, and it'll be interesting to see which carriers the Grand S lands at and what kind of changes (if any) it goes through on its way here.

Via CNET