HTC Tattoo

Great little phone, brilliant size too.

Runs pretty much all the same apps as an iphone.

Easy to use and much faster than a blackberry.

The camera is probably the only thing that lets it down, but hey, its a phone, it makes calls, problem?

Also it vewry easy to set up and personalise. When you first turn it on it introducs you to every helpful feature.

WiFi connection is very fast and the mobile internet is brilliant too (vodafone). When you plug this phone into your PC you can share your mobile internet with it and browse internet on your laptop or computer too.

easy peasy.

would definatly recommend it

A great little phone, and to be honest the reason I got it was because i didnt want to be one of the sheep and buy the same tired old iPhone or Blackberry.

The Tattoo doesn't come with a great range of Android toys to keep your interest up for too long, but there are plenty of downloads from the marketplace to help maximise it's potential.

battery life has been good, no software failures, true I have had a few issues with unsent SMS messages, however I have not established if this is a handset or network issue yet

A lot of reviews have the same general outlook on the Tattoo, and I can understand why. Because this is a Low end (though by no means shoddy) HTC phone it is rather 'compact'. By that I mean it has to do a lot with not so much as it's bigger brothers.

The processor can get slow when multiple things are going on, and the camera is oddly slow. This can be seen on videos, though the camera (despite being only 3.2 MP) is generally nice and crisp. However this isn't really persistent and I find that once an app gets going it's generally fine.

The screen is nice and bright, and though the touch functionality is responsive, it can get slugish. I would also not recommend this for people with big fingers, as hitting the on screen keys will probably become a chore. In response this I will say the spell correction/suggestion is very good.

The Android OS does make it very appealing phone to use, more so than something like a Blackberry Curve. It handles mail and WiFi well though bluetooth is something of a mystery.I've never got that to work.

One of the biggest gripes is the battery life. Turn WiFi on and you have a power wasteland after a few hours. Another review mentioned the poor manual, and I agree. You do have to find out a lot for yourself, though it isn't too hard as things are generally well placed.

If you have the money/desire to go up a level, I would recommend looking higher. On the other hand the Tattoo, if free on a contract, does hold it's own. It's easy to liken it to the big power houses out there, but HTC have done well to fill this end of the spectrum. As a first smart phone; not bad at all. Don't forget you can buy new cases (the whole case) which may not seem a reason to buy the phone, but it costs around £10+ (all online) and there are some nice designs, and you can make your own.

First impression is that the HTC Tattoo is small but feature packed. I haven't had any real problems with it and for the price it is a superb little andtoid phone. Free Google maps sat nav is a very welcome bonus and works as well if not better than some dedicated sat nav equipment. Battery life is as expected... dismal, but an overnight charge keeps it running happily all day.

OK, the HTC Tattoo is cheap, entry-level, and early-adopter-ish - but that's not sufficient excuse for what doesn't work, what I can't configure, and what I can't find out how to do.

1: As a phone - it misses calls, a lot: perhaps 10% of incoming calls simply don't ring, but show as a missed call.

It also takes so long to be contacted via my network (Orange UK) that it usually only rings for maybe 5 seconds before switching to answerphone, even though my account setting for forwarding delay is 20 seconds.

And when you're talking, the phone goes into dark standby almost as soon as the call starts, which is fine for battery conservation, except that the button you press to bring it back to life is the hang-up button. So you have to hang the phone up to switch the display back on, which makes it almost impossible to phone an automated system where you need to press keypad numbers to navigate.

2: As a PDA - I bought this as a "smartphone" on the basis that it would be smart enough to let me (for example) choose larger font sizes for basic info display, such as phone book, called ID, and text messages. If if IS possible to change these settings, I can't find out how to, and HTC's support email simply didn't respond to repeated queries.

I even tried reading the pitiful excuse for a manual, which basically tells you how to do all the things which are perfectly obvious, and nothing else whatsoever.

App-wise, while it's stuffed with apps I'll never need (I don't tweet my face or similar), it doesn't have even a simple text editor. So while I can (probably) record audio, take photos, shoot videos, and do a thousand other things I don't want to do, I can't write text notes and store them.

I'll give it one star for the GPS and Mapping features, which work fine and are useful.