last100 » HTC Sense

Review: HTC Tattoo (vs HTC Hero) – Android’s mass-market future?

Steve O'Hear — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:21:10 +0000

First, a quick confession: I had no intention of reviewing the HTC Tattoo. Why? On paper at least, it’s a poor man’s HTC Hero. Yes it does feature the same HTC Sense UI, which greatly improves on the stock version of the Google-led operating system, but the Tattoo lacks some of the hardware features to match. However, following a mix up with a courier and a serendipitous email from HTC’s PR firm, a Tattoo for review was sent my way.

What I’ve come to realise in the few weeks that I’ve had the device on loan is that the HTC Tattoo, while not especially exciting in itself, points to Android’s mass-market future, and why rival platforms, along with the plethora of dumb-phone OSes, need to sit up and take notice.

What’s different and/or missing

Screen size. Gone is the Hero’s 3.2 inch screen. Instead, the Tattoo uses a smaller 2.8 inch display. It’s considerably lower resolution too. Down from 320 x 480 (HVGA) to a more feature phone-like 240 x 320 (QVGA) resolution. The most noticeable difference is that web pages and lists require more scrolling because of the reduction in vertical screen real estate. Images also look less sharp. The upside – and this shouldn’t be underestimated for some users – is that the device is smaller and more pocketable. In other words, it feels more like a phone! As a result, it’s a little more comfortable to hold too and that bit easier to operate one handed.

Resistive screen. This is one area where we can see some obvious cost-cutting. Unlike the Hero, the HTC Tattoo utilises cheaper ‘resistive’ touch screen technology rather than ‘capacitive’. Resistive screens require more pressure to register a touch and therefore tend to be less responsive when using the flat surface of a finger as apposed to a finger nail or stylus. The Tattoo doesn’t come with a stylus and nor should it need to. Android is designed to be finger-friendly after all. So how does the Tattoo’s resitive screen fair? It’s not actually that bad. The difference in responsiveness between the Hero and Tattoo is minimal, which makes me think that HTC have picked a particularly good resistive screen and/or that Android driven by the Tattoo’s Qualcomm processor running at 528 MHz (the same as the Hero) can more than handle the job.

One thing that isn’t great, however, is that the screen appears to be recessed quite a bit with a thick layer of plastic or glass (I can’t quite tell) sitting on top. The result, coupled with the Tattoo’s lower resolution, is that text and images look a little soft. It’s bearable but it is a considerable step down from the Hero or Palm Pre or iPhones of this world.

No multi-touch. It’s one of the costs of choosing a resistive screen. The Tattoo doesn’t offer multi-touch input. This mainly affects web browsing. There’s no pinch-to-zoom and instead the Tattoo offers Android’s standard zoom in and out on-screen controls. You can, however, still double tap to zoom in on a block of text, which I find works just as well.

4-way navigation pad. Breaking from standard Android protocol, the Tattoo doesn’t feature a mini track ball but instead uses a standard 4-way navigation pad. It’s not really an issue, still allowing for one-handed operation for most tasks, although scrolling through lists, such as your in-box, isn’t quite as smooth.

Smaller battery. The Tattoo’s battery is 1100 mAh compared to the Hero’s 1350 mAh. While that will impact on talk time a little, for other tasks such as web browsing I haven’t noticed much difference. It’s a smaller battery but it has to power a smaller screen too.

No portrait on-screen QWERTY. Being that bit smaller there isn’t room for a portrait on-screen QWERTY only a standard T9 type affair. It’s no big deal though, rotate the phone into landscape and an on-screen QWERTY appears. It’s pretty usable too. HTC’s on-screen QWERTY is way better than standard Android.

Less megapixels. The Tattoo’s camera is only 3.2 megapixels compared to the Hero’s 5. Less megapixels is usually a bad thing but the Hero’s camera is rubbish anyway. If you’re after a camera phone, look away now.

What’s present and correct

Android. Like the Hero, the HTC Tattoo is powered by Google’s Android OS, which means that it has the same superb ‘over-the-air’ integration with Google’s various web services – Gmail, Contacts, Google Calendar etc. – single sign-in and you’re good to go. The Tattoo also uses a slightly more up-to-date version of Android (1.6).

HTC Sense. This is where the Tattoo starts to punch way above its weight. It has the same HTC Sense custom UI and social networking features as the Hero. Instead, I would have expected HTC’s cheapest Android offering to drop Sense in favor of a standard out-of-the-box experience but thankfully not. You get the same unified address book (Google contacts and Facebook), revolving home screen widgets (Twitter, Weather, Stocks etc.), revamped media player and, frankly, a much nicer theme. It makes the standard Android look ‘n’ feel a bit like Windows XP in comparison.

Superb web browser. The standard Android web browser is one of the best, if not the best, already on a mobile phone. But HTC have added a few tricks of their own, double tap to zoom and limited support for Flash, including Flash video.

MicroSD card slot. Expandable and relatively cheap storage.

3G, WiFi and GPS. No shortage of connectivity options.

3.5 inch headphone jack. HTC finally gets it. No need to be stuck with the crappy ear buds supplied or use an adapter.

FM Radio (bonus). The HTC Tattoo features an FM Radio, which the Hero doesn’t. Perhaps another reflection of its feature-phone like targeting. An FM Radio is standard on even the cheapest of feature phones but not so important on a high end smartphone, presumably because of the plethora of alternative media options.

Verdict

If you can afford a HTC Hero then you’re probably better off buying one instead. But if you can afford a Hero then you’re probably not the Tattoo’s target user either. And that’s the point. The Tattoo’s pricing puts it into the mid to low end smartphone / high end feature phone category but with less sacrificed than you might expect.

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More social networking impressions of the HTC Hero [review]

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:10:59 +0000

Way back when I reviewed HTC’s Windows Mobile-powered “Touch Diamond” smartphone, I gave props to the handset maker for trying to put a consumer and ‘finger-friendly’ face on Microsoft’s aging mobile OS, but ultimately concluded that the effort was in vein. Instead, I urged HTC build an OS of its own or more realistically, adapt the then up and coming Google Android platform to reflect the company’s own User Interface and UX ambitions. Enter the HTC Hero.

While HTC’s first two Android phones were standard ‘out-of-the-box’ affairs on the software side, the latest effort – the HTC Hero – features a near-complete UI overhaul called the HTC Sense that not only gives Android some much needed polish (Google isn’t exactly known for eye candy in its User Interfaces) but also puts social networking at its heart. The latter isn’t surprising considering that social networking is currently seen as the “killer” app for mobile and is helping drive up smartphone sales and mobile data usage, therefore loved by handset makers and carriers alike.

Having lived with the Hero for over a week, it’s easily the most social networking savvy smartphone I’ve tested, going far deeper than the efforts of most, if not all, of its competitors (I’m still waiting to do a full review of the Palm Pre). For example, while the iPhone has by far the best standalone Facebook app – the Hero sometimes even defers to the web-based mobile version – it’s just that. Standalone. Whereas the Hero takes a people centric approach, peppering a little Facebook integration here and there where most appropriate.

A widget on the home screen with favorite contacts for speed dialing indicates which of those contacts has a new Facebook status update, along with displaying their avatar from the social networking site.

Open up the Hero’s full address book and the avatars taken from Facebook, LinkedIn or Gmail are on show for each contact.

Click on a contact and scroll horizontally across the lower menu bar and you’ll once again find their latest status update as well as any ‘events’, such as a birthday, all pulled in from Facebook.

There’s also a tab for photos from two popular photo sharing sites – Flickr and Facebook – belonging to the accounts of said contact.

Again, rather than relying on separate apps for each social networking service, the content is arguably displayed where it should: with the person with whom it’s associated with.

Not only is the people-centric approach to integrating social networking sites a very practical way of keeping up with friends’ content, it’s also really fun as there is an element of surprise and added context.

The obvious example is that you’re about to call or text a friend, you pull up their contact details and notice they’ve uploaded new photos and updated their status. You’re then more likely to work that into the conversation. Alternatively, you notice a different contact has updated their status and so you decide to give them a call.

And so on.

There is, however, a downside to the idea of converging contact info and content from various social networking services into a unified ’social address book’, a la INQ, Palm’s WebOS etc. To get it working really well requires quite a bit of intervention. While the Hero tries to guess which contacts should be merged, it doesn’t always get it right and for quite a few contacts I had to manually link them from one service to another or delete duplicates. That’s not such a big deal – you only need to do this once for each contact – but it also has a less obvious effect.

Lock-in.

That’s probably music to HTC’s ears. Since their isn’t a standard protocol for linking social networking contacts into one converged social address book, if you move to a different device or more likely one from a different handset maker, you’ll have to start over. It’s taken me quite a few days to get the Hero fully working with, not against my social networking accounts and I’m really liking the result. Moving to a different platform – if the Hero was my primary smartphone (hey, I jump devices all the time) – would now be that bit less attractive.

Of course, HTC isn’t the only handset maker who may benefit from this. Motorola’s MotoBlur is attempting something similar, the same with Vodafone’s just announced 360, along with INQ and Palm.

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First impressions of the HTC Hero (widgets, web browser, and social networking)

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:02:03 +0000

Yesterday I wrote a rant about a few of Android’s shortcomings but my faith in the Google-led OS has already been somewhat restored (not that it had waned completely). A few minutes after hitting publish, a helpful courier dropped off a review loan of the HTC Hero, courtesy of mobile carrier Orange. The Hero is the first Android-powered device to be heavily customized in terms of User Interface, with HTC’s Sense UI, something that we’re going to increasingly see handset makers do. Just last week, Motorola unveiled its own social networking-driven take on Android, and INQ, makers of the so-called ‘Facebook’ phone, have revealed plans to do the same.

But back to the Hero. A few notable improvements over the standard ‘out-of-the-box’ Android include…

Much better looking and more useful widgets

The widgets that HTC have developed have a familiar look to anyone who has ever used the company’s Touch Flo layer on its Windows Mobile devices, especially the weather and clock widgets. Graphically, they look really polished but there is also some genuinely useful functionality too. I particularly like the Twitter widget (and included app) that allows for updates to be viewed and published from one of the Hero’s revolving home screens. Other nice touches include quick toggle on-screen switches for WiFi and Bluetooth, and speed dial favorites that feature avatars pulled from Facebook, Gmail or your own locally stored contact photos.

An improved web browser with iPhone-esque pinch to zoom

I hadn’t picked up on this from the various reviews that I’ve read but the web browser in the HTC Hero has the same multi-touch gestures for zooming in and out of a page as the iPhone. An inverted pinch zooms in, while a pinching gesture zooms the page out. Best of all, a double tap on an area of text zooms right in and columns are re-flowed almost instantly to eliminate any horizontal scrolling (see video above). Again, just like the iPhone.

Social networking integration (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Google)

One of the most fun aspects of the Hero is the level of integration with third-party web services. When you first set up the phone it not only asks you for your Google account credentials so that it can set-up the Gmail client, pull in contacts and sync with Google Calendar (presuming you use all of these Google services) but it will also, optionally, ask you for your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr account details.

Facebook friends are then added to your address book and their latest status updates from the social networking site, where available, are then displayed in each contact field. (The Hero attempts to converge contacts across more than one service, with mixed success.) The Twitter widget is also ready to go, and any photos taken can be uploaded to Facebook or Flickr. The result is that the Hero is no less a Google Phone as it is a Facebook Phone or Twitter Phone, and so on.

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HTC unveils Android-powered Hero, apes Palm Pre’s Synergy

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:22:04 +0000

I knew it would happen, I’m just surprised it’s taken so long: Google’s Android has been given a major UI overhaul by a third-party handset maker.

At a press conference in London this morning, HTC unveiled it latest Android-based phone – dubbed “Hero” – but unlike the G1 and HTC Magic before it, the new handset has been given a major UI overhaul that the company is calling HTC Sense.

Like the “Synergy” feature of Palm’s WebOS, social networking – Facebook, Twitter etc. – is integrated at the heart of the phone in a people not service-centric way. View a contact on the phone’s address book and you’re presented not only with their contact details and latest text messages but also status updates from Facebook and their most recently published photos on various photo sharing sites.

HTC Hero's "HTC Sense" UI

And like Gmail, the Hero’s email client presents emails as threaded conversations.

Another example of deeper web-service integration is the phone’s photo gallery app that not only accesses pictures taken by and stored locally on the device but can also pull in images from third-party photo sharing sites.

Search also borrows a little from the iPhone’s and Palm Pre’s “Universal” approach, not only searching data on the phone itself but also Twitter and, presumably, Google or one of its competitors.

Predictably, home screen widgets also feature heavily. And once again, these can pull in local data – latest SMS messages, world clock etc. – or that from third-party web services, such as the latest status updates, weather etc. The best comparison in this area is Nokia’s newly released N97.

All in all, it not only looks like HTC have put their own stylistic stamp on the standard Android UI but that HTC Sense, debuting on the Hero, takes and builds on top of the best of recent innovations from Apple, Palm and Nokia.

How well this works in everyday use, we don’t yet know. With the Hero set to go on sale in Europe sometime next month, hopefully I’ll get my hands on a review unit soon.

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