HTC Tattoo
The handset design immediately reminds me of the old HTC Touch. The texture of the default cover has a matt finish similar to those found on expensive Sigma photography lenses or some laptop chassis. However, I suspect that the coating might "peel" over time. Nevertheless, the capabiltiy to completely change the appearance of the Tattoo saves the day! The fully customizable covers can be design and ordered through
Garskin. Compared to the earlier HTC Android phones, Tattoo comes in a smaller
2.8-inch resistive touch screen. This resisitve touchscreen does not support multi-touch, but allows finger nail operation (the ladies cheers!). The smaller screen means a smaller display resolution at
240 x 320px with
65K colors.
Measuring only 106 x 55.2 x 14 mm and 113g (including battery), Tattoo is definitely a shirt pocket-friendly phone.
The top edge of the Tattoo is a 3.5mm input for any standard 3.5mm earphones. For mic support, use the provided headset. A 3.2 megapixel fixed-focus module camera is located on the rear side of the Tattoo. This simple camera gives a maximum output resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. It does not have autofocus or macro modes. It does not come with a flash as well. Sad to say this means that the pictures are practically useless and chances of blurred pictures are very high.
The bottom edge of the Tattoo is the mini-B USB input for data transfer and charging.
The standard Android phone buttons are located at the bottom of the display: Home, Menu, Back, Search, Accept & End Call. Unlike the Magic or Hero, Tattoo does not come with a trackball. The navigation is done using an old-skool four-directional cursor located on a narrow ring. The centre of the ring is a huge Enter button (good for fat thumbs).
A simple press and slide-up motion removes the back cover, revealing the battery. Rated at 1100mAh, the cell allows talktime up to 6.5h on GSM. However, expect to charge the battery everyday, when you are constantly connected to the internet (which what Android phones are meant to be).
Under the battery reveals the SIM card slot. The bottom left corner is a microSD card slot which supports up to 16GB. Despite being a hots-wappable port, it is of any annoyance if the user needs to constantly remove the back cover to access the card.
Operations
Tattoo is powered by a single Qualcomm MSM 7225 processor which runs up to 528Mhz. Tattoo can communicate on GPRS and EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 384 Kbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, miniUSB 2.0. Tattoo runs on Android™ 1.6 (Donut) platform which is newer than Magic and same as Hero. Multi-tasking is possible by holding the Home button, which will display the last six applications used. These remain active until overwritten by the seventh application. In People Widget, you can add contacts from various networking websites or email accounts. You can even get updates from them such as Facebook or Flickr updates. That is the beauty of Android smartphones! They allow users to get updated by staying connected to the internet! Never get lost again with the built-in GPS integrated with Google Maps.
The startup sequence can be quite a wait before being greeted by the green Android™ robot doing a "peek-a-boo".
With the HTC Sense UI (only on Hero and Tattoo, but not Magic), users can customize up to 7 Homescreens with HTC or Android™ widgets and shortcuts. The main Homescreen has the standard layout of a Clock and Weather Widget, People, Messages, Browser and Camera shortcuts.
To release the GUI from Lock, simply drag the time bar downwards.
The number keypad interface is designed so that fat fingers will never miss a button.
In the applications menu, you will find the standard applications. Some really useful applications will be GMail, Google Talk and Google Maps. More applications can be downloaded from the Android™ Market. Tattoo supports various multimedia formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, Real Audio and Ogg formats. The integrated FM Radio that can be run in the background or listened on loudspeaker.
Chinese input is supported via pin yin or scribbling anywhere over the screen. This makes a perfect input method for my mum who prefers to text in Mandarin.