HTC Tattoo

Product: HTC Tattoo
Website: www.htc.com/tattoo
System Specifications: Android, 2.8-inch touch screen, 3.2 megapixels, 3.5mm audio jack, ExtUSB, Quad-band, 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS, GPS, GSM, HSDPA, Li-ion battery, microSD,
Price: Depended on contract, £279.99 – SIM Free

HTC HAS BEEN a great pusher of the Android operating system on mobile phones, dating back as far as October of 2008 with the first Google OS handset - the T-Mobile G1. Since then it has produced most of the world's supply of Android mobile phones, with only a few others throwing their hats into the ring thus far.

HTC has brought out its third Android phone of the year, the Tattoo. This phone is not an all singing, all dancing mobile to top the last handset. In fact, HTC has done a 180 and put out a lesser phone than its last model. This is for the more budget conscious user who wants the Google OS experience but does not want to remortgage their house to afford it.

From the appearance of the Tattoo, HTC looks like it has gone retro by moving away from its Android designs for the Magic and Hero and instead produced a design much closer to its first Touch handset of early 2007. Instead of going for the moleskin feel of its original touchscreen mobile, the Taiwanese phone maker has opted for a flush metal casing, although different designs are available for the handset and even personalised, custom-made fascias are possible.

The HTC Tattoo handset is quite similar to the Touch. In fact, the Touch handset's overall dimensions of 99.9mm long, 58mm wide and 13.9mm thick aren't too far off those of the Tattoo handset. The Tattoo's form factor measures 106mm long, 55.2mm wide and 14mm thick, with only 1gm in weight between the two to them. They also share the same 2.8-inch touchscreen with QVGA 240x320 resolution, such that one might think the HTC Touch has been crossed with the HTC Magic.

HTC has cut some corners with the Tattoo to reduce its overall manufacturing costs, therefore making it much cheaper to build. This is evident straight out of the box, as the touchscreen the company has used is resistive, not capacitive. This means that the Tattoo doesn't support gentle screen touching to select and execute OS functions and applications - a more forceful approach is needed. This isn't too much bother but it could take some time to get used to if you've been spoiled by capacitive touchscreens.

At times the Tattoo's touchscreen is a tad unresponsive, and one needs to be precise using one's fingers. This could all be down to the smaller screen size of this mobile, as the touchscreen area is much tighter than on other phones. There were also some bothersome issues with the smaller screen with regard to text entry. On the HTC Touch of yesteryear the portrait keyboard on the Windows 6 OS phone took up a good deal of the screen, where on the HTC Tattoo it's really small and cramped, and struck us as not as useful due to its small size. The only manageable way to enter text on the Tattoo is with the keyboard in landscape mode where rather deliberate, careful typing is needed due to the smaller screen.

HTC has replaced the pearl tracker ball from the last three Android handsets, with a d-pad controller just below the screen much like in the HTC Touch, only it's a lot more responsive than the original and it's a welcome addition. We actually never used the controller very much, as we preferred to use the touchscreen for most operations, although it came in handy for text editing, as selecting a single letter on the screen was difficult at the very best of times.

The Android 1.6 ‘Donut' release of the OS runs the Tattoo along with HTC's user interface, which is known as Sense. Due to this UI first seen in the Hero handset HTC has once again lost the Google endorsement, which was seen on the rear of the Magic phone. It is a worthy tweak to the OS and there's some deep down integration with Facebook to automatically populate the mobile's address book and show continual updates for individual users on their own address book page. There's also a lot more customisation of the phone's home screens that's possible. Seven screens are on offer, along with six different variants or collections of screen known as scenes all for those seven home screens. All of which means that there are 42 possible screens to customise and populate with applications and widgets, so the user is free to install all there is on the Android Market without fear of cluttering the OS.

The deep integration of social networking sites is a useful trait on this handset, especially if you are a slave to Facebook and Twitter, as both have been catered for and thoroughly worked into the HTC user interface and its applications. There's a decent Twitter widget included, along with the Facebook aspect mentioned before, which also pulls the contacts list from Gmail and merges them all together nicely.

HTC has cost-cut once again on the hardware front from the specs seen in the Hero and Magic, all to offer an affordable Google OS powered mobile. These other cost cutting measures affect the camera megapixel count and ability, which is only 3.2MP and without a flash but it still takes some nice shots. HTC could have hampered the audio connections by sticking to the accompanying miniUSB/ExtUSB socket for headphone connectivity as previously seen in the HTC Magic, but thankfully it hasn't done so. On board is the welcome 3.5mm audio socket, catering for the user's own choice of headphones and not forcing reliance on dodgy OEM listening devices.

HTC also didn't scrimp on the battery either, as it included a 1100mAh unit. In our tests the battery survived six hours and ten minutes worth of calls and, in a separate test, the phone lasted five hours and thirty-five minutes receiving calls. All the while the Tattoo was connected to WiFi, updating itself with Tweets, Facebook status updates and emails, making it useful for a good solid day out and about.

In Short
The HTC Tattoo is not so much a budget Android phone as a less expensive Google OS mobile without all the niceties the HTC Hero has to offer. We can't help but think that HTC should have led with this handset after the T-Mobile G1 venture and then slowly worked its way up to the Magic and Hero, as that gradual path of improvements would have had a much greater impact on the mobile phone world. Releasing a more cost effective handset this late in the game seems a tad redundant, unless HTC is trying to show how versatile it is as a company or it lost the contract to make the truly budget Android handset, the T-Mobile Pulse. Either way, the Tattoo is a decent inexpensive phone that offers the Android platform along with the HTC Sense user interface experience. It is slightly let down by the small resistive screen, which takes some time getting used to if you've been used to a capacitive screen. Although it's not at as attractive a price point compared to the T-Mobile Android based Pulse at £180, it's still a darn sight cheaper than the SIM Free Hero at £370. µ

The Good
Budget Android phone, HTC Sense, 3.5mm audio jack.

The Bad
Virtual keyboard is too cramped in regular mode.

The Ugly
Small resistive touch screen that can be unresponsive.

Bartender's Report
8/10