ASIA China : ZTE Corporation has been awarded the prestigious “Red Dot Product Design Award” for the soon-to-be-released, ZTE D90 ( inset ) and S900 mobile phones.

“We are proud that ZTE has won this award because it recognizes the design capability of Chinese mobile manufacturers,” said Chen Cuifeng, the designer of ZTE D-Series.

The Red Dot has been awarded by the German design association “Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen” in Germany to honour outstanding international product design since 1955. This marks the first time that a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer has been awarded the honour. Today’s distinction follows ZTE’s receipt last year of the prestigious iF Award for its Snow Lava, GamSIR, and King handsets. The S900 was also the top winner of the “iF China Award” in 2006, making it a two-time title winner.

The ZTE D90 ( inset ) featuring Fastap will offer a superior user experience for messaging and 3G mobile data services by combining the simple, intuitive and innovative Fastap keypad and the eZiType word completion engine on an elegant, slim flip phone.

The ZTE D90 features the Fastap keypad, which is the first keypad in the world to integrate a full one-tap alphanumeric keypad on a mainstream flip phone. With letter and punctuation keys surrounding the standard numeric keypad it is powered by an error-prevention software for care-free operation of the phone. Fastap enables the design of the ZTE D-90 to strike the perfect balance of style, form, functionality and ergonomics.

Additionally, the ZTE D90 will incorporate a new, specially-designed backlight Fastap keypad with semi-transparent key labels to make the D90 keypad look like a standard keypad at first glance, creating a sleek appearance – when in use, the letter keys instantly light up, highlighting the functionality of the Fastap keypad.

With intuitive Fastap ‘hot keys’, the ZTE D90 enables one-click access to many mobile data services, applications or contacts right from the idle screen. The user is able to easily personalize the Fastap ‘hot keys’ to their favorite applications or contacts. For example, users can press & hold ‘M’ for Messaging.

Typing messages is made even quicker and more accurate with the Zi Corporation’s eZiType word completion and correction software. The ZTE D90 is the first mobile phone in the world to feature Zi’s eZiType engine, which features intelligent, practical word completion, along with next word and phrase prediction. The auto-correction feature reduces typical errors by correcting duplicated letters, missing letters or punctuation marks, switched letters (e.g. ht versus th), wrong letters (i.e. adjacent key) and mistyped words. To make typing faster, the ZTE D90 is capable of automatically adding words, names and slang to its internal memory based on usage.

Designed for use on EVDO networks, the ZTE D90 can support access to an array of advanced voice, data and multimedia applications including full track music downloads, video downloads, location-based-services and messaging services including email, IM, text messaging and multimedia messaging.

Also recognized for its innovative design, the award-winning S900 uses an extremely simple design that employs touchpad and sensing key technologies. Without any keys on the front panel, this phone is characterized by smooth configuration and simplified outlines. The long-strip background lighting of the handset can help users to distinguish between phone calls and e-mails. Simplified external configuration and practical details represent the perfect interpretation of the aesthetic principle “Less Is More.”

ZTE has been awarded over 871 mobile-related patents. ZTE works closely with tier-one operators around the world and has supplied top-end 3G products to operators in North America, Italy and the U.K.