Sony Xperia Tipo review

This Sony Xperia Tipo review, should present a new model from the Sony company and their first affordable Android device. We say first, because this Japanese company announced the production of great number of similar class phones by the middle of 2013. This announcement, we must admit, pleased us quite a lot because this company “bombed” the market with quite a few new Xperia phones, but all were upper class phones and great deal potential customers that prefer low-cost phones, did not or could not buy some of those more expensive phones. Our opinion is that the Sony company chose a clever timing of this move, because their South Korean competition, the Samsung company (a company with a big arsenal of cheaper Android phones), is too busy with the US Apple company ongoing lawsuit. Harmonious design , and high build quality! [caption id="attachment_2869" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Xperia Tipo fits in hand fine[/caption] The harmonious design of this phone and its modest dimension (103 x 57 x 13 mm and 99.4 grams) make this phone a little “chubby” and it fits in the palm of its user just fine. The materials used in production of this phone are good quality. The front of this phone has curved shapes that kind of resembles a “waterfall” and proudly wears the Xperia logo. The back cover is made of softer plastic and this touch make the phone’s feeling when in hand, a class higher than its price suggests. The buttons you can find on this phone are the power on/off , and a side volume rocker that’s kind of thin a “hard to find”, but works perfectly. Also at the bottom of the display there are 3 capacitive touch sensitive navigation buttons. In the upper right corner of the phone, there is a tiny signal LED flash that indicates a missed call, message or the battery capacity. Thanks to the “smart” design, this phone is easily operated by one hand. Display [caption id="attachment_2872" align="alignleft" width="249"] The display has natural colors and good contrast[/caption] The Xperia Tipo is coming with a 3.2 inch TFT touch screen display which has good brightness and performs well in strong sunshine conditions. The colors are natural and the display has good contrast. The resolution is 320x480 with 180ppi pixel density. The display is a great one for a device of this class, but we don’t recommend it for long article reading, due to its size. The viewing angles are high, and the only sharpness deteriorating is experienced when the display is viewed from the top. An inevitable criticism cannot be omitted on the lack of oleo-phobic coating of the display. Overall, the performance of this phones display is good in its class, and we evaluate it with a strong 8 mark. Functionality and the UI The functionality of this phone is high, thanks to the Ice Cream Sandwich User interface. This phone has the useful and these days indispensable deep Facebook integration, music, video and picture viewing widgets. The Xperia Tipo comes with a easy connection access widget unlike the Samsung and LG Android phones where you have to choose these options from the drop menu. Message typing won’t be an easy task for users with thick fingers, but when the phone is rotated to its side, this task becomes far more pleasant. Processor and memory [caption id="attachment_2880" align="alignleft" width="264"] Good processor performances[/caption] The processor of this phone is 800MHz “strong” and uses Adreno 200 graphics, and we find this the bottom line even for a initial Android phone, but we must admit that during the phone we were pleasantly surprised by its performance and did not experience any functionality difficulties and we may say the phone works flawless. The Xperia Tipo has 512MB RAM memory and 2.9GB of internal (about 2.5 Gb is user available) memory. This device has a memory expanding possibility with a Micro SD memory card up to 32GB. Internet and connections The Ice Cream Sandwich browser does not support Adobe Flash, only the 4.0 Lite version that enables ads viewing for instance, but the when the power of the processor is considered we must say the browsing is fast and performs well. We experienced some difficulties while page zooming, the rendering took some time but overall its in tolerable limits. The Xperia Tipo supports 3G and 7.2Mbps download speed, and the usual Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection. This phone also features A-GPS and FM radio. Camera [caption id="attachment_2887" align="alignleft" width="300"] Wide range of supported applications[/caption] The camera of this phone is nothing more and nothing less than the 3.15MP cameras that we are used to. The cameras UI is quite simple and user friendly, and the picture quality made by this camera are acceptable. The video recording quality, again, is not different from the other 3.15MP cameras recording possibilities , and with its VGA 30fps is fluent. We experienced its quality deterioration when tried to watch it on wider screen which is normal. Great sound quality! When we speak about the sound, microphone or loudspeaker quality, we must pay all due respect to the Sony company. During the sound quality testing we experienced great loudness and also clearness, even in the street with high traffic and high noise levels. The possibility you will miss a call even if your phone is in the next room or at your purse is pretty low. The Battery of this phone is a standard 1500mAh and it gets the job done. According to the specifications of the manufacturer, the battery enables 4.5hours of 3G talk or 30 hours of music playing, and that’s quite impressive. [caption id="attachment_2889" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Xperia Tipo comes in 4 interesting colors[/caption] To wrap up this review, this phone and its performances are good and balanced, and we can say it’s a good build quality phone that will meet the requirements of great number mobile phone users. The Ice Cream Sandwich operating system offers a wide range of application support. The hardware of the Xperia Tipo will most likely not satisfy the needs of the more demanding Android users that need more processor power, but performs well in every day Android tasks, and the functionality and the sound quality of this phone is a great advantage of the Xperia Tipo. This phone is at the same price range and the class of the Samsungs Galaxy Y or the LG Optimus L3, but it has better display resolution, more internal memory but also a nicer design. The Xperia Tipo had been also released in a Dual SIM (Dual Stand-by) version by the official name Xperia Tipo Dual, and these and similar Sony phones that are yet to come, and the way we see it, Sony could significantly shake up the current mobile phone technology market.