Away from their flagship smartphone Sony is offering consumers handsets that are at more affordable price levels which is now a growing trend on the Android platform. Today we have news that pre-orders have begun for the Sony Xperia SP in the UK and India.

High street retailer Phones 4u has begun taking pre-orders for the device with deliveries expected to begin on the 3rd of May, and the device is available on contract with the likes of Orange, EE, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.

One of the cheapest tariffs is with Vodafone at £25 per month that provides users 300 minutes of talk time, unlimited text messages, and 250MB of data with no upfront fee for the phone. Meanwhile if Orange is your carrier of choice they will let you have the phone on a £20.50 per month contract with a £99 upfront fee and this will provide you with 200 minutes, unlimited texts, and 100MB of data.

The first 2,000 customers that pre-order the device will receive a free Bluetooth headset, and for more details of the price plans on offer click here. Meanwhile consumers in India can also pre-order the Sony Xperia SP and at a lower asking price than previously thought, as flipkart has the device up for delivery on April 24th for RS. 25,990 and those ordering the device now will also get a free 16GB memory card and a case.

To quickly recap the device has a 4.6-inch TFT LCD touchscreen display at a resolution of 1280 x 720, which is powered by a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus processor clocked at 1.7GHz. There is 8GB of expandable on board storage, 8-megapixel rear camera, and a 0.3-megapixel unit on the front running the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system.