Update: we've now published our lovely and in-depth Motorola Defy Mini review.

Motorola announced the rugged Motorola Defy Mini at CES 2012. A small phone, it measures 109 x 58.5 x 12.5mm and weighs just 107g.

That inevitably means the HVGA touchscreen is mini too, measuring just 3.2 inches, and 480 x 320 pixels.

The resolution is just one indication of cost cutting. The screen isn't as sharp as we'd like, although we'll see if that persists in the final version, since the handset we've reviewed here is a non-final model.

Rugged features will be key to the Motorola Defy Mini's success. Gorilla Glass has been used for the screen, making it scratch-resistant.

The top mounted headset connector and left side mounted USB port are protected by hinged covers. The backplate is held tightly in place by a sliding lock, and there's a seal around the battery.

The design isn't as industrial looking as that of the Motorola Defy, but we like it for that. However, we found the side-mounted camera shortcut button, volume buttons and tiny on/off button on the top edge all rather fiddly to use.

The non final version of the Motorola Defy Mini that we tested had no SIM card support, but enough of its innards and outward shell were intact for us to get a good idea of what to expect from the release version of the phone.

There's a 600MHz processor, 120MB of built-in storage and a 3-megapixel camera included.

This is accompanied by standard smartphone essentials of Android 2.3, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 7.2Mbps download HSDPA, GPS and eCompass. There's DLNA support too.

There's also a rather impressive 1650mAh battery, which ought to keep the phone going for a relatively long time. We'll see about that when we test the final phone for our full review.

Priced at around £160 SIM-free in the UK when it's released in late February/early March, the Motorola Defy Mini's specs aren't bad for a cheap mobile phone.

Interface

Motorola has skinned the Defy Mini in a slightly new way, and part of this is about the new MotoSwitch user interface, which incorporates features that learn how you use the phone and adapt it accordingly.

Social Graph, for example, will provide information and contact access to your most frequently contacted people.

Our review sample didn't like making connections with our social media accounts, so we've not been able to test this fully yet, but it looks like it could be fun.

Activity Graph learns what apps you've been running and changes to reflect this - or you can set it up with your favourite apps.

Motorola also includes its Profiles switcher so you can change the look and feel for Home, Work and Weekend.

We found the touchscreen a little unresponsive on our review sample - we had to press to make contact rather than just gently tapping, but that may be ironed out in the final version of this handset.

Messaging

With Facebook and Twitter integration, things bode quite well on the messaging front, although our sample wasn't happy about synchronising our accounts, so we can't tell how well the Motorola Defy Mini handles contacts integration. We'll test this for our full review, though.

Of course the handset can deal with SMS too, and it has Swype built in. Some people find this makes text entry faster than tapping at the keyboard.

We found the small size of the keyboard made text entry a bit tricky for us - and we've got quite small hands. You might find the same thing on this dainty little handset.

Internet

The Motorola Defy Mini's small screen isn't really best suited to internet browsing.

There's nothing wrong with it on the connectivity front, with Wi-Fi and 7.2Mbps HSDPA downloads, but we think 3.2 inches doesn't give you enough space, and the pixel count - at 480 x 320 - is low too.

Web pages look squeezed. Looking at the TechRadar home page, the mobile version looks fine, but pop into classic mode and things are too squished for our liking.

In general we found web pages loaded fairly quickly, although the last little bit of complex pages sometimes took its time to resolve.

It's not fair to read too much into this, since our review sample wasn't a full production model, but we reckon that maybe the 600MHz processor might cause some slowdown in the final version of the Motorola Defy Mini.

Either way, what you will notice in the final version of this handset is that there is no Flash support.

We hate it when handsets don't have Flash. It means that video embedded into some websites is a no-go area, and for us that really detracts from the browsing experience.