Sony Xperia tipo Review

Sony Xperia tipo Review

 

As the A listers of the mobile industry, launch some of their high-end creations in this season. The dual-SIM market has plenty of buyers. But is anyone paying attention? Well, Sony is and has thus launched its tipo Dual, that runs on Android 4.0. Here’s an interesting equation = A dual SIM + by Sony + on Android 4.0 + that if you bargain hard, it can be yours for Rs. 9500/-.The Tipo is essentially the baby smartphone in the Sony Xperia range of devices. In India, this is the first entry-level Xperia smartphone. In a price segment where smartphones clearly look, feel and perform with the “budget” aspect in mind, the Tipo isn’t being held back by that.

 

First impression : a basic Android phone, but despite the low price, Sony has not considerably pulled down the quality of the product. But yes, we do wish the screen had a better resolution, more real estate. There is a micro USB slot at the side similar to the tipo. The camera is also a similar 3.2MP fixed focus shooter without flash. The power button and 3.5mm audio jack are at the top. The battery in tipo dual has as much fuel, as the tipo phone. The battery can give upto 5 hrs of talktime. Wish there was more battery to support longer talk time with two SIMs in one phone.

 

Build & Design

The two aspects of the Tipo – the tiny form factor and the surprisingly good finish. Up front, the 3.2-inch display does look rather small. The black bezel wraps around the display, with three touch sensitive keys – return, home and options. Where the bezel finishes is where the plastic colour body starts, and runs all around the sides and the back. Also read, First Impressions: Sony Xperia Tipo

Features & Specifications

This is a pretty unassuming smartphone on the spec sheet – single core 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, 3.2-inch display and 2.5GB internal storage with a microSD card slot. Very basic specs, and even some phones like the Huawei Ascend G300 have more powerful processors and more RAM. However, we not judge the Xperia Tipo till the time we actually describe the performance of the device as a whole.

Performance

As the spec sheet suggested, the performance of the Xperia Tipo is very basic. Having said that, we need to specify that within its boundaries, it does brilliantly well. If you are opening a maximum of 3 basic apps (social networking, Whatsapp and IM – the likes) at the same time, you will not face any slowdowns. However, any more and there will be a serious performance dip that will impact app opening times as well as even the UI. Interestingly, Timescape doesn’t slow down the performance, and will not feel sluggish. This is quite the opposite of what the Sense UI does on budget HTC phones. Full marks to Sony for optimizing the UI rather well.