Monday, July 26, 2010

HTC Tattoo and tethering

I hooked up the HTC in tether mode tonight, I had to go to settings and switch it off then on manually but then it shared the connection over the phones 3G, cool now I dont have to buy a 3G modem for internet access when I am out, there is also an app in the market to share the connection over an adhoc network so I might give that a try in the future..

Friday, July 23, 2010

An Android Smartphone the HTC Tattoo

I have been playing with my HTC Android phone for a week or so now and thought I would jot down my thoughts on the phone over the next few weeks, things like how it rates going from symbian s60 v3 to Android 1.6 and what a 'budget' phone brings to the market.


The Processor is a  Qualcomm running at 528 MHz The phone runs Android 1.6 with the HTC SenseUI on top. A really nice feature is the seven desktops this UI gives you, Makes for a nice uncluttered home screen.

It has 512 MB of ROM and 256 MB of RAM, the size of the phone is also great for me as I ride a motorbike and wanted a smaller phone to keep in my jacket when riding. The phone is 10.6cm long 5.5cm wide and 1.4cm thick at its thickest point and it only weighs 113 grams.
The screen is small but quite clear, a little hard to read in full sun,it is a resistive screen , a few people see this as a bad point but I like it as I use a stylus on devices like the tattoo with smaller screens.

The phone has a d-pad instead of a trackball, great for using as a joystick in my opinion and buttons that are well laid out and it is fitted with a standard 4 pin 3.5mm socket for handsfree units and normal three contact headphones. The bluetooth media is great in full stereo on my TDK bluetooth headphones, as clear as the on board for me and the on board isnt bad. The tattoo is also fitted out with the following a GPS, 3 axis Accelerometer, 3 axis Compass, WiFi, 3G, and FM Radio to round out the package, not bad for a budget phone.

It doesnt run the latest offering from google and as of writing it is stuck at Android 1.6, there was some buzz about 2.1 coming to it from HTC but I am not holding my breath.

Even though this phone may seem crippled on RAM and processor speed, it runs surprisingly well with 1.6, and snaps along quite nicely even with a few apps and widgets galore running, I am running a task killer to free it up as needed and that works well.

Well thats enough for this post, I will follow up with more of my thoughts on the phone in the next few days..

Monday, July 19, 2010

A geek and his Android Phone

Well I went a got an Android phone, it is a HTC Tattoo running android 1.6 with HTC's Sense UI on top, I actually like the Sense UI.. For a budget phone it is great, it cost me AU$210 with postage.