It’s time to blog about my 5th day with the HTC Tattoo, which means I’ve been staying away from my iPhone for five days – congratulations, me 🙂
Previous articles in this series:
- Introduction To A Week With HTC Tattoo (Android)
- Warm-up To My “iPhone Replaced By Tattoo”-Experiment
- Day 1 & 2: HTC Tattoo, It’s Small & Slow
- Day 3: HTC Tattoo, Camera & Video Recording Quality
- Day 4: HTC Tattoo, Web Browser & Text Input
Android Market
The Android Market available for HTC Tattoo is quite small compared to the market available for HTC Hero, Magic etc., I was told. This is because the lower screen resolution on the HTC Tattoo, unfortunately, means it can’t run all the applications in the Android Market. Never the less, I was able to find a nice bunch of applications and games. I can’t say for sure that there’s everything you will ever need and since I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I could just browse around and try to get a sense of what’s being offered.
When you launch Android Market you are presented with a list of Featured applications and games. In the top menu you have 3 tabs: Apps, Games, Downloads and an icon to Search.
Of course the tabs are further divided into categories, so entering Apps will give you the option of further entering into Comics, Communication, Entertainment and so on. The same with Games, only different categories. I browsed a few categories in both the Apps and Games tabs and I wasn’t able to find anything with a price tag, everything was free. Not sure why that is, but I’m sure one of you Android users can explain it to me? Leave a comment!
Installation of applications and games is very smooth, just click it and it will download and install in the background. Ready to go.
Design Your Own Cover
With the HTC Tattoo review device, I also received a voucher so I could try to design my own cover. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to do it as the cover would take over a week to arrive and I only had the Tattoo for a week. It seems to me though, that it’s really easy to use and you can put pretty much anything you like, onto your own cover. Check it out at tattoomyhtc.com.
I think design your own cover is an excellent idea. We don’t see that many phones anymore where you can replace the cover and have it more personalized. The cover on the Tattoo also seemed to be a very nice fit, not squeaky or anything so replaceable covers shouldn’t really be a problem either.
Conclusion
It’s time to wrap up my iPhone Free Week and let the world know what I think about HTC Tattoo. There’s two things I need to mention: HTC Tattoo and Android.
Android
Let’s start with what I was most pleased with, Android. It seems like a great operating system for mobile phones and I’m sure it will be even better when Android 2.0 is released. Android is definitely the best mobile phone operating system I’ve tried so far, next to the iPhone of course. The thing is, Android OS and iPhone OS is quite different and doesn’t really appeal to the same kind of user, in my opinion. Android gives you more options and is more advanced where iPhone OS is really simple to use and runs extremely smooth. I could easily use either one of them but I still prefer iPhone OS though.
HTC Tattoo
This phone was not as pleasant as its operating system. It’s cheap and that’s a good thing. It’s small and that’s a good thing too – but at the same time it’s bad, because it means the screen is simply too small. The two worst things about HTC Tattoo is the small screen size and the resistive touchscreen technology used. It really should have been capacitive as the iPhone uses.
The CPU in HTC Tattoo doesn’t feel like the fastest CPU around either, the system was a bit slow from time to time but nothing you probably wouldn’t mind. I only noticed it because I’m used to how fast the iPhone 3GS is.
Obviously, the camera isn’t very good either. You can watch my HTC Tattoo camera review video if you like, it has both picture and video examples. But, it has a camera and it can be used every now and then.
HTC Tattoo has more buttons than the iPhone. Once you get to know them, it’s quite nice. The “menu” button is like a “right click” in most applications, giving you further options only available after having clicked the “menu” button and so it doesn’t require additional space on the screen for those extra menu items. I rarely used the joypad to navigate, because I’m such a heavy touchscreen user. I think, especially with a resistive touchscreen technology,using the joypad to navigate through certain menus etc., would improve the user experience.
I’m going to give it a rating of 4 out of 5 Apples. That rating might be a surprise after reading my reviews, but the price taken into consideration, the HTC Tattoo does a really good job. The only downsides is the screen and the slow CPU from time to time – things you might only notice if you come from an iPhone 3GS and most iPhone 3GS users probably wouldn’t buy a HTC Tattoo anyway.
Rating: 
In the end, I’m still an iPhone user, but I want to thank HTC for providing me with this HTC Tattoo for testing this past week – it really was a pleasure!
Klaus, I have one question that can I use GPRS on airtel freely? Is there any hack that I can use airtel gprs freely?
.-= chandan´s last blog ..How to submit article to article directories =-.
I don’t know what “airtel” is, but I wouldn’t use GPRS even if I had a gun pointed at me, it’s so slow I would rather die fast than die slowly surfing the Internet with GPRS 😀
But if “airtel” is a service provider then no, you can’t hack it to get free data – that would be stealing as well.
It was great to know about the iphone, and that article was really awesome. They are providing lots of facilities so it will be a great experience to have it. Any ways keep sharing.
And that’s the end of that chapter.
Put my tattoo up for sale now, after having owned it for just around 2 months.
The phone is pretty much okay, but it does have it flaws.
Android OS is a peach, it does have it’s flaws and the whole menu/configuration system is somewhat far from perfect. Especially concerning the user friendliness, it’s no where near as intuitive as the iPhone (imo). The HTC sense however makes up for a lot of it’s faults, and the 2.0 android looks to be even better. Sweet!
Another let-down is the media volume, even on the lowest setting it’s too loud for “laying in bed chilling” listening.
The worst of all, however, is that it’s just so damn sloooow. I’ve given up web browsing for the same reason and generally find my self using fewer and fewer of it’s features. So this is it.
Dunno what I want now, was thinking of trying the nokia 5230/5800. Price on these things give them a better WAF then the iPhone itself.
But I’m definately not done with android, just for now.
Love this article. I stubled upon on whilst researching for my next phone. Due to cost my options are HTC Tatto or Iphone 3G. How does the Tattoo camera compare with the 3G’s 2 megapixel. Also I’m not sure if I can live without a video camera in my pocket for those occasional family vids.
Hi Paul,
I think you should try and read the comment just above yours, posted by Martin – here’s a direct link: https://techpatio.com/2009/apple/iphone/iphone-free-week-day-5-htc-tattoo-android-market-conclusion/comment-page-1#comment-8200
I think he sums it up pretty good, what’s wrong with the HTC Tattoo. I personally would go nuts if I had to live with only the Tattoo, knowing what camera and video quality I could get from the iPhone 3GS *and* how much faster (“snappier”, if you want) the 3GS is, compared to Tattoo.
Personally, I would prefer the 3G even over Tattoo if I had to pick, but keep in mind that the iPhone does come with its limitations as well.
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Future Of Flash in iPhone/iPad? “Old Technology”, Says Steve Jobs =-.
I’ve had a Tattoo for a couple of weeks now and find it great. The camera and video quality are fine for me as I only use them for texting and SMS. The camera not having autofocus is a slight downside as it means that barcode scanning apps will not work with it. However the phone is nice and light and works with my in car bluetooth, which the iPhone 3GS does not.
In summary, the Tattoo is a good entry level phone for Android. Good for the casual user who wants sonmething small and light. If you want something more substantial there are plenty of others, like the Hero.
Thanks for the responses. Actually managed to squeeze a Hero handset from my phone company, probably because the Desire and Legend are due soon.
Absolutely delighted with the phone and find myself hardly needing to use my laptop for anything other than word, excel etc.