NVIDIA officially took the wraps off of its new quad-core Tegra 4 processor at CES last month, but unfortunately for anyone interested in trying out the company's new silicon, the announcement didn't include any details about when we might see some Tegra 4-powered smartphones come to market. ZTE has remedied that situation tonight, as it's revealed that it's teaming up with NVIDIA to launch the first "super phones" powered by Tegra 4. ZTE says that its first Tegra 4 handsets will debut in China in the first half of 2013. Details on the hardware plans are still light, but the Chinese phone maker did tease that it's working with NVIDIA to prep a 4G LTE smartphone that'll utilize NVIDIA's i500 LTE chipset.

ZTE has introduced its fair share of Tegra-powered products in the past, including the Mimosa X, Era and Grand S, and now it looks like the company will be continuing its work with NVIDIA on some Tegra 4 hardware. While the two firms look to be playing their cards pretty close to the chest for now, we do know that the first Tegra 4-equipped phones are due to arrive some time in the first half of this year, so that's certainly a start. Of course, that 1H 2013 release is for devices that are bound for China but Vizio has said that it's working on an Android tablet with Tegra 4 inside and HP is reportedly cooking up its own Tegra 4 slate, so U.S. customers may still have other ways of getting their Tegra 4 fix. Stay tuned.

Via ZTE