(XINHUA)

The first Chinese-Tibetan bilingual smartphone debuted in Lhasa, China's Tibet Autonomous Region, on October 28.

The Huawei smartphone, C8815, offers bilingual text input and costs 990 yuan ($161). Users can install Tibetan-language applications on the phone.

More than 80 percent of the Tibetan population live in remote rural and pastoral areas, many of whom do not understand the Chinese language.

The Central and Tibet regional governments have invested more than 1 billion yuan ($163 million) since 2008 on technological application of the Tibetan language, including the development of Tibetan-language office software and digital dictionaries.