HTC Tattoo review, Price, pictures, Details, model specifications
The HTC Tattoo wants to redefine smart in smartphone. This affordable little thing was among the first droids to go mass-market. But run-of-the-mill specs don’t mean a boring personality. The HTC Tattoo wears its heart on the sleeve and a shirt for every day of the week means no shortage of sleeves. What do you know, HTC are busy running a tattoo shop.
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The Android Market is a huge part of the deal with every droid phone. The HTC Tattoo has two: a beauty shop and a food store to go to. Back at launch, the QVGA screen resolution wouldn’t let the Tattoo make the best of the Android Market. Things should be different a few months later with more QVGA droids around.
The HTC Tattoo is the unlikeliest of phones to be bored with, but there’s more to this than the custom-designed covers: the Tattoo will be getting the Android 2.1 Éclair update. Nice one, we say: some happy users and a review that’s at least remotely on time. Here go the full specs to get us started:
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
- 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
- Heavily customizable: exchangeable covers
- Android OS v1.6 (Sense UI), upgradeable to 2.1 Eclair
- 2.8″ resistive touchscreen of QVGA resolution
- Qualcomm MSM 7225 528 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
- 3.15 megapixel fixed-focus camera
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
- Standard miniUSB port for charging and data
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
- microSD card slot, up to 8GB support (a 2GB card in the box)
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Direct access to the official Android repository
- Smart dialing
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
Main disadvantages
- QVGA resolution doesn’t do Android/ Sense UI graphics justice
- No video-call camera
- Camera lacks auto focus, flash and has a rather basic UI
- CIF@15fps video recording (352 x 288 pixels) is below par
- No voice dialing
- No DivX or XviD video support or a third-party application to play that
- Poor MP4 playback performance – barely watchable in video resolution above QVGA
- No Flash support for the web browser
- No Bluetooth file transfers (not without rooting)
- No TV-out port
It’s the custom-designed covers that make the HTC Tattoo a unique package, a phone for users who want to express themselves. The unique customization is the right thing perhaps to make an otherwise average smartphone stand out – and inspire mass users to endorse a new platform.
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The top-notch connectivity aside, the HTC Tattoo is a standard smartphone package. This is a first-gen Android with all the inherent weaknesses. On top of that, you get a smallish low-resolution screen. Well, that’s one part of the deal you sign for. But it’s still all fair and square we think when you throw in the reasonable price tag and the chance to express your artistic self.
So, is the Tattoo really your kind of phone? You know, even if it’s not, that’s easier to fix than any other phone out there. The HTC Tattoo has been around long enough but it’s keen to offer a new experience every time. Let’s see.
Design and construction (continued)
Six hardware keys and a circular D-pad with a huge confirm button make for a crowded navigation panel below the screen. The top buttons are rocker styled; accommodating Home and Menu left, and Back and Search right. There are dedicated call keys below and the big round D-pad-like center.
The keys are slim and small but are well defined and solid to press. The D-pad can scroll both vertically and sideways but you’re not likely to use it much on a full touch phone.
Unfortunately, even though they look metallic, they are plastic and we’ve heard some user reports of some keys metallic finish peeling off. Let’s hope it’s not a widespread issue.
User interface: Sense UI earns an extra point but QVGA squanders it
HTC Tattoo runs on version 1.6 of the Android OS but the preinstalled Sense UI makes a pretty big difference in terms of user experience. It is basically the same thing you get with the high-flying HTC Hero but for one important difference.
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Good looking phonebook does a great job
Well, HTC have their own vision of what a good phonebook should look like and have tweaked the default Android app with some cool graphics and features of their own. The result is quite satisfactory indeed.
Opening a contact’s details presents you with the basic info for the contact – name and photo, numbers, emails and such. What you’d notice though is that there are another five tabs at the bottom and you’re just viewing the first tab.
Telephony does well
Voice quality when making calls with the HTC Tattoo is good and the call volume is decent so you don’t have to keep it at max at all times.
The dialer features a keypad and a list of contacts beneath (you can hide the keypad) and also boasts Smart dialing. It’s pretty rare for an Android handset to have smart dialing so we believe extra praise is due.
Messaging well covered
The HTC Tattoo can handle all common types of messages – SMS, MMS and email with ease. Email support is excellent with support for Exchange out of the box and social media buffs will be pleased with the level of integration of that content as well.
Like on other Androids, if you have only one SMS message, a line in the notification area displays the sender and part of the message itself. If you have two or more messages, you are simply informed of the number and once you hit the icon you’re taken to the Messaging Menu.
Image gallery looks nice
The HTC Tattoo gallery has a new main menu list-with-thumbnail structure to replace the old grid view. The Albums app (that’s its given name) automatically locates images and videos, no matter where they are stored. Images and videos stored in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder – quite effective file management.
Video playback capabilities are still pretty limited
Video files can be accessed only from the Albums’ subfolder as there is no separate icon for the video player in the main menu. The video files can also be viewed as a grid or filmstrip and can be shared on Gmail, HTC mail, Messages or YouTube.
Music player needs an update too
As with the rest of the multimedia department, the music player is also totally redesigned by the Sense UI, but this time there are no extra features added.
Very good audio output
The HTC Tattoo surprised us with its audio output which is slightly better than that of the Hero. The noise level, dynamic range and stereo crosstalk remain strong points of its performance and this time the frequency response is excellent too.
Pretty poor camera
The HTC Tattoo is equipped with a 3 megapixel fixed focus camera with no flash of any kind. That should be enough to keep your expectations reasonably low, but even then the Tattoo manages to disappoint.
The camera interface is pretty simple with little controls and few customization options. There is a camera/camcorder switch and a gallery button. The confirm button serves as a shutter key. Since there is no autofocus the lack of a dedicated shutter key with half-press action is no big deal.
Video recording
The HTC Tattoo video isn’t much of a treat either. The phone captures CIF video at 15 fps, which is almost as good as no video recording. Bringing the resolution down to QVGA increases the framerate and fixes things up a bit but videos still don’t get as smooth as we would have liked.
A great browser suffers the resolution penalty
The HTC Tattoo comes with the traditionally cool Android web browser with snappy and intuitive UI but loses points on the QVGA display. With this kind of pixel count only a small part of most pages can fit the screen and still be legible so you will need to do lots of panning.
Organizer and applications
The HTC Tattoo came without a document viewer, so we headed to the Android Market to find one. We found only a couple of options and both were trial versions (it could be because the Tattoo runs an older version of Android).
GPS navigation
The HTC Tattoo comes with a very capable GPS receiver that quickly got a lock and didn’t loose it even without a clear view of the sky.
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Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and of course makes an appearance on the HTC Tattoo as well. Its voice-guided navigation version, the Google Maps Navigation is available only in the US, but even without Navigation, there is some kind of guidance: your route and current location appear on the screen so you’ll reach your destination eventually.
