[StrangeWizard]

I was using a Blackberry Curve which I bought in Aug 2011 and now I was pretty bored with it. It also started throwing up random niggles.
It was time to get a new phone.
With a budget of about 10k I started looking.
Phones which I considered were:

Micromax A110 - Good features and screen size for the price. Micromax's reliability was a big question mark. Also, I never got to see it in person, almost all stores had it out of stock.

HTC Desire C- Good looking phone for 12k but 600MHz processor caused things to lag down once in a while. Games like temple run couldn't work with proper stability.

Sony Xperia Tipo- 800MHz processor with Adreno 200 GPU and 512mb ram. Camera below average and screen a bit small. Price 10k.

I picked up the Tipo Single sim Black colour from Croma for 9499.

What I like :
Screen is very responsive.
Plays youtube videos without lag.
Browser is great and loads pages quickly.
Music quality.
Battery life.

What I don't like :
Small screen size of 3.2 inches. A bit difficult for typing long texts.
Below average camera.
Occasional lag which happens about 1 in 10 times.
No pushmail like my BB.

[StrangeWizard]

Unboxing and Hands On :

The Tipo comes in a very small box. The quality of the packaging is average.
The phone and other contents are just placed in the box without any support of any kind like sponges or those plastic "shelves" that we see in Apple boxes.



Inside the box you will find the following things :
1) Phone.
2) Battery.
3) Charger with USB port.
4) USB data cable.
5) Screen Protector.
6) Earphones.
7) User manual and warranty documentation.


Take the phone in hand and you'll notice that it is pretty light and good to hold. It feels a bit small though.


On the front, the 3.2" screen covers almost the entire surface. There are 3 capacitive buttons i.e. Back, Home and Menu button which are right below the screen.
Below that is a plastic arced surface with Xperia branding on it.



On the back is the 3.15 MP camera with no flash. There is also an old Sony Ericsson logo at the bottom along with a loudspeaker.
The back cover has a matte finish which provides good grip and doesn't catch fingerprints.



On the top is the 3.5mm earphone jack and the lock/power button.


On the left there is the micro USB port and on the right is the volume rocker.




After opening the back cover you need to insert the SIM card and the MicroSD card and then mount the battery over it.
Putting the SIM card in is easy but taking it out is a bit difficult.

Press the power button and the phone will come to life. The Xperia logo comes for a while after which the phone starts. It does take some time to initialize.

[StrangeWizard]

User Interface :

The Tipo comes with Android IceCream Sandwich 4.0.4 out of the box.
Any existing Android user would feel right at home whereas someone new to this OS would also find it very easy to use after sometime.
Sony has done some minor tweaks to the OS to give it the Xperia touch.

The menu is very smooth and surfing through the menu is fast and with no lag.

It comes with the stock android browser and also features tabbed browsing.

Pinch zoom in and zoom out again work flawlessly. After zooming in it takes about a second for the text to clear out and fit on the screen size.
Panning the webpages is smooth but sometimes there may be a bit of a lag on image heavy pages.
Youtube videos load quickly and play without much lag. I prefer watching HD videos on wifi though.




On the home screen, pressing the Home button for long brings up the recently opened apps and you can slide them to the side to end them.


And pinching in on the home screen makes all the widgets to start floating.


Music :

As with any Sony devices, this one also packs a good music system. The speaker is loud enough for the price.
The phone comes with the regular fit Sony earphones. These provide good sound quality but I prefer the in-ear types so I'm using my Philips earphones with it.
I also tried listening to music with my Sony MDR-V150 DJ headphones and loved the sound quality and the volume.
It plays regular formats like mp3, AAC etc. There is a space given for album artwork but in some songs it doesn't show the artwork.
I haven't played any videos yet so can't comment on that.


Camera :

The 3.15 MP camera is strictly below average. There is hardly any detail in the pics. Clarity is decent enough in the daylight but it sucks at night because there is no flash.
There are some scenes like Night scene, Sports and Beach and Snow.
You can also set the exposure value.
I'll upload some pics taken with my camera by tomorrow.

GPS and Maps :

As with any Android phone, this one also comes with Google Maps and Navigation pre-loaded.
The GPS takes about a minute to lock in on the location and provide the route details.
I tried the Navigation from Lower Parel to Nariman Point and it was really very accurate on the entire route. I also tried it at Kandivli and even here it was very accurate.
Apps like the Ullyses Speedometer, which show the car's speed through GPS, work nicely but it lags by a couple of seconds while showing the actual speed.

Battery life :

The Tipo comes with a 1500mah battery which is pretty good because the battery has to power up a relatively small screen.
It takes about 2 hours for it to charge completely.
With wifi almost always on, 3G data, playing games for a couple of hours, about 30-40 mins of internet surfing, texting on whatsapp and some phone calls, the battery lasted about 23 hours. It was at 5% when I kept it for charging again.
Oh and I also used GPS for 20 mins and then forgot to turn it off after that for about 3 hours.
I'm still figuring out how to take screenshots, so later I'll put up a shot of the battery life which I'm getting.

Hmmm, now I don't know what else to write.
Oh, I got a vodafone 3G 500MB free data plan for 3 months with this phone. I'm using my existing number and never knew about the scheme until I got an sms from Vodafone at night saying my Xperia 3G plan is activated.

The screen resolution is 320x480 IIRC. The images are pretty crisp and don't appear to be pixelated.

Verdict :

Overall, the Sony Xperia Tipo is a good phone for its price. You get decent features and a good using experience. The Micromax A110 is also a very good phone but buy it only if you want a bigger screen. There are enough MMX A.S.S horror stories on the net already.

[Technocrat]

Note from Support - Thread moved from Assembly Line to Gadgets, Computers & Software. Thanks for Sharing.

[StrangeWizard]

Oh btw I forgot to write about the call quality.
The network reception is excellent but voice clarity is average.

There have been instances when the voice of the opposite person sounds quite different to what I used to hear on the BB.
A couple of callers have also said that they are hearing their own voice echoing while talking to me.
These are negatives to those who talk a lot and Sony should fix this asap.

The other issue with the Tipo is it doesn't recognize memory cards sometimes.
I haven't bought a microsd yet but have read about this issue a lot on the internet.
Basically Sony has divided the internal storage into 2 parts : Internal storage and internal SD storage with 754MB and 2.1 GB respectively. So when you insert an SD card it shows up as external SD and the phone causes problems in MTP (Media Transfer) mode.
It works fine if you switch to MSC (mass storage) mode but the catch is that if you switch to MSC, then the contents of the 2.1GB internal storage are no longer accessible.
I'm looking for a fix for this issue and if anyone can help me out I'll be glad.

Cheers.

[hellmet]

Thanks for the very detailed review! I've been looking to purchase this phone for my dad. It's available on Sulekha for 8.8K.

Why does it have a Sony Ericsson logo?

I once owned the Moto Defy Plus (which was stolen within a week of purchase), and I noticed the same issue with call quality. Voice of the other person used to sound hollow and unnatural compared to my Sony Ericsson w550i (which I've been using for 6 years). Do you think it's the manufacturer cutting costs on basic equipment?

[dZired]

Thanks a lot parth for the review. Had been waiting for it since you wrote about your purchase on the android thread. I am also going for the tipo tomorrow. Will write about my experience in your thread (if you don't mind).

EDIT: What is that "screen protector" that you have mentioned in the components of the box? Is it a proper scratch card or the plastic cover that we can see on the screen in the pics?

[W.A.G.7]

Good review. But why did they give only a 3.2MP camera? Also must have is a flash. Is this the dual sim version? Another query - does this phone have haptic feedback, especially while typing out on the on-screen keyboard?

[StrangeWizard]

Originally Posted by dZired

EDIT: What is that "screen protector" that you have mentioned in the components of the box? Is it a proper scratch card or the plastic cover that we can see on the screen in the pics?

Ya sure post your review in my thread. Are you getting a memory card with your phone? Do post if it works without any issues or not. I'll buy a card soon.

There is a proper screen protector in the box. The one you see in the pics is just a cover.

@ W.A.G 7 - not sure what you mean by haptic feedback. If it means getting a small vibration while typing then yes that's there.

@hellmet - yes i think its the cost cutting. My BB had excellent voice clarity and it went worse only after the phone got completely wet in the rains. This one is already worse.

Btw guys can anyone suggest a good free app for a better keyboard? I find this one a bit small. But the text prediction is awesome! Just need bigger keys.

[StrangeWizard]

I got two new keyboards!

The GO keyboard from the app store. This app is pretty good and after selecting keypad size 5, I find it much better.

Also got the Android 4.2 keyboard. It is awesome
http://www.guidingtech.com/16652/use...rd-on-ics-now/
Now I wish I was typing this on my laptop by gesture input

Now I'm a happy man

[dZired]

Got the Xperia Tipo on 11th November. I am totally satisfied with the phone's overall performance.

The review by StrangeWizard already explains the qualities of the phone. Some things which I didn't like about it are:
- Camera quality is below average for a phone of this price.
- I found the volume of earphones lower as compared to my previous phones. The quality though is nice.
- Multitasking while playing a heavy game or app (like temple run) makes the processor a bit slower and the game stops running smoothly.
- While charging, the contents of the memory card get inaccessible sometimes.

Other than the above minute problems, I am thoroughly enjoying the phone. The touch sensitivity is spot on and the user interface is brilliant too.

I didn't face any problem with the SD card as mentioned above. The voice quality during phone calls as well as internet calls is great and I have not yet faced any problem like echoing which were pointed out by StrangeWizard.

All-in-all I totally agree with Parth that you can't get a better phone than this in less than 10K.

[StrangeWizard]

Originally Posted by dZired

Got the Xperia Tipo on 11th November. I am totally satisfied with the phone's overall performance.

which memory card did you get? I'm using a Samsung 8gb and haven't faced any problems yet. i connect the card to the PC via a memory card reader.
haven't tried transferring data on the card by connecting it through the phone's USB cable.
i installed an app called RAM booster but it just slowed down my phone so got rid of it.

[dZired]

Originally Posted by StrangeWizard

which memory card did you get? I'm using a Samsung 8gb and haven't faced any problems yet. i connect the card to the PC via a memory card reader.
haven't tried transferring data on the card by connecting it through the phone's USB cable.
i installed an app called RAM booster but it just slowed down my phone so got rid of it.

I use a transcend 4 GB card. I have tried connecting the phone to my laptop through the USB cable. It works flawlessly. Have also downloaded the sony PC companion but didn't find it too useful so I transfer files directly by using the phone as a mass storage device.

[carzone]

Thats a good review StrangeWizard. Recently I was in the market to help a friend to get a phone.
We narrowed on the Tipo and Lumia 510. He too had a budget of around 10k.
He did not want to live with the small screen, so finally he went ahead with Lumia 510.

Hes pretty happy with the windows interface, he was not hellbent on an android, so its okay with him.
The only flaw in the Lumia is that we were told that it has 4GB internal memory with no MMC slot, but when he started using it, he found it to be just 2.2GB user available.
Except from frequent data transfer, he is enjoying the phone.

I have not checked the call quality and the audio quality as well as the cam, so would let u know about it as i get some more time with his phone!

Did you consider Lumia BTW?
Have you started using the TeamBHP app on android yet?

Wish there comes up one for Symbian soon!

[dZired]

Originally Posted by carzone

Did you consider Lumia BTW?
Have you started using the TeamBHP app on android yet?

Well maybe I can answer your queries. While purchasing the xperia tipo I did consider the Lumia but I was always biased towards the android OS and that acted as the seal on the deal. I gifted my dad a Lumia 610 though.

And regarding the TeamBHP app, yes I use it everyday and it is a gem. Waiting for my girlfriend has now become quite easy.

PS: The camera quality is just average. In daylight, I am satisfied with the pictures. But in low light conditions, its better to leave the cell in your pocket.

Some pics I clicked during a recent visit to Amber Fort, Jaipur. Notice the difference in daylight and low light conditions.