China Unicom, which is currently the only WCDMA mobile telecom carrier in China, has just lifted the kimono on some mid-level Android smartphones.

The phones are based around a 1GHz processor developed by Qualcomm or MediaTek and have a screen of at least 4.0 inches.  They will be on sale for about $237, According to Digitimes China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom have been pushing inexpensive smartphones equipped with 600MHz processors and screens of up to 3.5 inches in 2011.

However they now think that there is increasing demand for higher hardware specifications, China Unicom has decided to upgrade smartphones for focus promotion to 1GHz processor and 4.0-inch screen size. The China market of mid to high-level smartphones is dominated by Apple, Samsung Electronics, HTC and Nokia.

More here.