HTC Tattoo review (2)

It is also fair to say that the HTC Tattoo's resistive screen technology makes it a little less rewarding to use than the more expensive HTC Magic's capacitive one.

The 3.2 megapixel camera is lacklustre. It lacks flash and autofocus and so predictably enough performs fairly poorly indoors. For point and shoot and upload to Flickr and the like you can get away with it. For serious shooting, use a proper camera.

With Wi-Fi on board you can use the built in YouTube client and other connected services like the Web browser over your home network easily, and when you need to use the mobile network the handset is HSDPA with downloads to 7.2Mbps. There's no front camera for two way video calls, though.

Its value added applications include HTC Sense, HTC widget, HTC Scenes, HTC Sync. Furthermore, it offers Google's mobile services including Google Search, Youtube, Gmail, and Google Talk. It also offers useful features including Weather, Twitter Peep and Smart Dialer.

The other features include Bluetooth, an FM radio, Google Maps, the Android Peep, music player and Footprints – which uses the built in GPS antenna to pinpoint places you are interested in.

The Android Market is here of course, so you can pepper the handset with additional applications. With 512MB of built in memory and a microSD card slot, storage capacity is not a real problem.

Call quality was good, and battery life was perfectly fine too. HTC says you should get 240 minutes of talk, 120 hours on standby, and we found we managed a day’s use between charges easily enough.

You’ll probably need daily power boosts though, if you are inclined to use the handset's more sapping features like Wi-Fi or the data connection daily.

Overall, it is the Google Android OS that is the Tattoo's lure, personalising the chassis is a secondary matter. The slightly small resistive screen is the main downside, the camera another negative, while HTC Sense user interface is a real upside.

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