Emerging from the growingly crowded sea of budget Android smart phones is the Sony Xperia tipo dual, quite rightly one of the smallest smart phones we’ve had. The 3.2 inch screen is undoubtly tiny by today’s standards, but we are thankful that the build quality is much better than we presumed. It is rather chunky, but that’s actually good; the phone has a little weight in it and holds well in hand. It also solidly made, with no creaking parts and a tough disposition.

The design is as straightforward as it goes. The power buttons under the screen. The volume toggle is at the side, and beside it is a one –touch SIM card toggle key. That’s right :the tipo supports a dual-sim setup, and you toggle between the SIM cards and its settings with a button press.

The dual SIM interface her is more robust than just this. You can set two different settings for both SIM’s and 3G connectivity is supported on both. Unfortunately , you cannot have the two networks running simultaneously ,which is a bit of a bummer.

The insides on the phone house an 800MHz processor, which does provide a rather smooth performance for the phone. It also runs Android 4.0.4. The UI here is nothing spectacular, but it won’t run heavier games nor handle video above 480p. The camera is rather poor, with no auto-focus and some white-balance issues.

What we do like are its very loud speakers, which is even louder some higher-end devices out there. The battery life is also longer here, thanks to its 1500 mAH battery and lower-res screen. It can power the phone well into the next day at maximum usage.