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Remember the good old days when Nokia had mobile handsets which we could customize by changing the outer panels? Well that fashion has been revived with handsets like the Corby but more so with this, the HTC Tattoo whose outer shell is completely bland as is but allows for personalization via a website i.e. http://www.garskin.com/htc/. This is the cheapest Android handset on Indian shelves right now. Here’s what my experience with the Tattoo was like. Form Factor The Tattoo is a small and very neatly designed handset that’s light weight and easy to use. Its 2.8-inch touchscreen display supports a 240 x 320 pixel resolution and features an accelerometer for screen rotation. HTC’s button systems are convenient and comfortable to use and the round five-way nav-pad gives the overall design a slightly elegant look. It has an HTC styled mini USB port at the bottom and a standard 3.5mm handsfree port located on the top with volume/zoom keys on one side. The 3 megapixel camera is at the back. The handset has been designed with easy to remove panels so you can design, select from pre-designed options and order as many as you like for $25 from Garskin. They’ll deliver it straight to your door in about 7-10 working days. The overall design is quite appealing. Features and Performance Interface Loaded with Android v1.6 and HTC’s Sense UI, the Tattoo uses its 528 MHz processor to the fullest. It’s not the speediest handset, I have to admit, but it’s far from sluggish. Sense UI allows for quite a lot of customization thanks to the very useful widgets and shortcuts that can be placed across the six desktops. The Android Market enables you to download a whole lot of free content from games to social networking applications etc. It’ll take you no more than a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the UI and the handset's functionality. While the portrait QWERTY keypad is a little too cramped and I found it a little difficult to use, in landscape mode it’s much easier to use. Media I’ve always been a fan of the Android music player. It has plenty of basic features like creating a playlist or sorting fields according to Genre or Artist and Album. What HTC has yet to incorporate in an otherwise very customizable OS are EQ presets. It doesn’t necessarily need it as the tones are well balanced, but for those who prefer a little more bass or a little more vocals for Audiobooks, there’s no way to make any adjustments. Thanks to the 3.5mm handsfree port, you can opt to use your own earphones but the bundled set is all you’ll need. The device reads your basic MPEG4 and 3GP file formats including iPhone and iPod friendly MPEG4 videos. Even with the slightly low end (considering the price) display videos are very comfortable to watch. HTC has also included an FM radio with the Tattoo which works out quite well. It took just a few seconds to scan and save all nine channels and reception was pretty good in most areas. There’s also a voice recorder available and the range on the microphone isn’t bad at all. |
Tags: Google , Android , Touchscreen , 3 Megapixel , HTC
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