Sony Xperia tipo

SONY XPERIA TIPO REVIEW

Sony Xperia tipo announced it in June 2012. The tipo (yep, that's a lower case ‘t' in there), is a tiny phone, designed for small hands. If you're a bit of a monster-digit then you might want to steer clear. The small handset will fit nicely in the pocket though, being 103 x 57 x 13 mm in size and its weight of 99.4g won't weigh you down. For all its low cost Sony has thought a bit about the look and feel, and the tapering of the edges inwards is a neat touch and makes a change from blockier designs. The inward curve arguably makes the phone a bit more comfy to hold than straight-sided phones too. There's also a little lip of bright shiny plastic beneath the three touch-sensitive shortcut buttons under the screen that takes the phone away from being a rectangular monolith. Build quality isn't bad. Yes the phone flexes slightly if forced, but it feels quite solid for all that. And Sony has mounted the headset slot where it should be on the top edge to keep music lovers happy. So far, then, so good. A small phone inevitably means a small screen, and this is a bit of a problem especially when it is low resolution too. The screen here measures 3.2 inches and it has 320 x 480 pixels. Reading web pages isn't the most rewarding experience as you have to do a lot of scrolling. Watching video is less enjoyable than it could be too. Tapping at the keyboard is tricky if you've larger hands. That's not our only gripe with the screen either. It seemed to be a bit reluctant to respond to taps sometimes. This wasn't so bad as to really irritate, but every now and again a tapped icon failed to react, and we felt irked. A phone that costs       isn't going to have earth shatteringly good hardware, but the mix needs to be serviceable. What you get here is an 800MHz Qualcomm processor which is supported by 512MB of RAM. It does OK, but isn't blistering - which is what you'd expect really. We did find that sometimes apps were a bit slow to load, and some YouTube clips took their time to render and play too. But it is nothing beyond what's to be expected for a handset at this price. What did irritate us was a memory expansion issue. With just 2.5GB of built in storage you'll need a microSD card and the slot is under the battery. If you like adding data such as music by swapping cards in and out, then the need to power down first will become a pain. While most smartphones are busy bragging about the size of their LCD displays or the number of megapixels or gigahertz they pack, the Sony Xperia Tipo is confident enough to declare that small is beautiful. It's not a phone for tech-heads, but if you want a smartphone that you can use easily with one hand and then tuck away in your pocket, the Tipo deserves a closer look. The Sony Xperia Tipo is an excellent budget smartphone with a compact and lightweight body. It includes a wealth of smart phone features, from web browsing to Facebook, Google Maps and voice-activated search. The camera isn't great and the screen is a bit cramped, but we like the generous onboard memory and the outstanding battery life. Android 4.0 is another welcome feature.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES

SONY XPERIA TIPO PRICE

Price in USA $253

Price in UK £160

Price in EURO €205

Price in PAK Rs.20,500

Price in INDIA Rs.14,990