Unfortunately, there’s very little to glean.  We now know that it runs HTC’s Sense UI and has a microUSB port, both grabbed below.   It is interesting nonetheless to see the paces a device is put through before it’s ready for release.

Wondering if your new HTC Desire will be getting Android 2.2? Yeah, so are we!  Well, according to HTC if your Android handset was made in 2010, it has a very good chance of seeing the Froyo upgrade (yay!).  The Desire, Droid Incredible, My Touch Slide, HTC Legend, as well as future models are a definite.  When this happens is anyone’s guess, but expect it to occur in the second half of 2010 at the earliest. For those who don’t want to wait you can always root!

Here is a portion of the official HTC statement regarding Froyo upgrades:

[...] if your phone was launched this year, we will most likely offer an upgrade for it to the Froyo version. This includes popular models like the Desire and Droid Incredible as well as hotly anticipated phones like the Evo 4G, MyTouch slide and upcoming models. We will announce a full list of phones and dates once we are closer to launching the upgrades. We are working closely with Google and our other partners to ensure we have the earliest access to everything we need to provide a complete and solid Sense experience on Froyo. We expect to release all updates in the second half of this year but can’t be more specific yet.

Well, look what we have here! The above HTC Android handset has just passed through the FCC with AT&T 3G bands.  Yippee!  I have got to be honest, I am loving the form factor, looks a lot like an HTC Touch Pro 2.  Typing on an Android version of the Touch Pro 2 makes me drool just thinking about it.  What do you guys think? Nice form factor?  Let us know in the comments!

The 1GHz powered Incredible comes with a 3.7-inch touchscreen and Android 2.1, a combination definitely worthy of some Google Navigation. So guess what? You’ll be able to snap up a Window Mount/Phone Holster combo that will make using your awesome new Android device a lot easier in your car. But hey you – no texting while you drive!

As you can see it will cost $24.99 but unfortunately setting the phone in the dock won’t put it into what they call “Map Mode” but we know better as “Car Home”. I’m guessing you’ll also need an alternate power source as it doesn’t APPEAR the mount has any sort of charging mechanism and GPS Nav definitely drains battery.

We also have a bonus accessory leak for you: check out this slick case that has a Red & Black gradient and snaps on for $24.99.

Pretty nice looking! Originally I was going to say I’d prefer an all red or all black case, but the gradient really makes that ring around the camera POP – I like it.

What do you think about the above two accessories? Will you snag them if/when you get the Incredible?

As if dropping one bombshell wasn’t enough, this 2nd Incredible update ALSO comes from AF member/guide Anonimac, who we can safely say is today’s Phandroid hero. While Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 event gobbled up more attention than we care to admit, these two Incredible gems deserve a TON of attention as Verizon customers are early awaiting this HTC Superphone’s arrival.

Remember – all of this goodness is coming from Phandroid-sister site, AndroidForums.com. We’re creeping up on 100,000 Registered Members so if you love you some Android, we recommend you join!

HTC Desire

Amongst the Android handsets, the current beloved Google Nexus One gets a cloned brother dubbed HTC Desire that may be the next preference for those consumers who won’t get to see former one anytime soon. Both phones with almost the same specifications will kind of confuse users as to why HTC offers two phones with same hardware features.

HTC Legend

The HTC Legend takes a design tip from the Apple MacBooks with unibody aluminum construction. You will also find an optical trackball, slight chin, and buttons that are physical ones even though they might appear to be capacitive touch sensitive ones. The Legend has a 3.2 inch AMOLED HVGA display and runs Google Android 2.1 with a 600 MHz processor. HTC also will be including their updated version of Sense UI that includes a new Friend stream and groups of widgets. Friend stream offers a single place for Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter streams.

HTC Desire

The HTC Desire is essentially a Google Nexus One with HTC Sense UI. It has the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 3.7 inch AMOLED display, Android 2.1, and all the rest of the Nexus One goodness. The latest version of Sense is included, along with some other improvements and widgets. For example, you can long press text in the web browser and look up words in a dictionary or Wikipedia, you can send paragraphs to Google Translate, and also use new email, weather, and Agenda view widgets. I personally find a lot of value in HTC Sense, but unfortunately all of us Google Nexus One owners won’t get this Sense update since it is an HTC add on and the Nexus One is a Google-branded device.

It is no surprise to see the Tattoo coming from HTC: they have a history of producing various formats of Windows Mobile devices so are ideally placed to repeat this operation for Android. The HTC Tattoo, then, follows the inoffensive design lines of preceding HTC touch devices and at first glance could easily be taken as a Windows Phone.

Although it is an entry-level or “mass market” device, the build quality is still good. Plastics are used throughout, but they are free from creaks and it looks smart. A range of custom covers will be available with the option of designing your own through tattoomyhtc.com; ours simply had an Android popping his head out of the back cover, the cuddly little chap that he is. The HTC Tattoo measures 106 x 55.2 x 14 mm, so is relatively compact.

The front sees the usual range of controls: Home, Menu, Back and Search sit paired on two rocker keys under the screen, with a central four-way/ok controller flanked by the calling keys. The action on the buttons is reasonable, if a little shallow, although those with bigger hands might find that bending your thumb to use them is a little uncomfortable.

The locations are reasonable too but you’ll probably find in one-handed use that reaching the extreme left or right key (Home and Search respectively), depending on which hand you are holding the phone in, is difficult. The four-way controller might not actually get much use, but can slide through the HTC Sense homepages or up and down menus as you see fit without touching the screen, perhaps overcoming some of the niggles with screen responsiveness.

The left-hand side of the phone sees a volume rocker. The top of the phone gives you the 3.5mm headphone jack and around the back is the 3.2-megapixel camera, sans flash. On the bottom is the bespoke USB connection, which we have found will accept a standard Mini-USB in absence of the supplied cable.

The screen is the area where the HTC Tattoo really differentiates itself from the HTC Hero and other Android devices released so far. The HTC Tattoo comes with Android 1.6 (Donut) which supports a wider range of screen resolutions than previous versions, which is where HTC really save the money in this model.

The screen is a 2.8-inch QVGA 240 x 320 pixel resolution display and it is resistive – quite a drop down from the impressive screen found on the HTC Hero. The operating system, Android with HTC Sense sitting on top, is essentially the same but the experience is quite different.

Being a resistive display means that you lose the multi-touch support that gives the Hero such a good browsing experience. It also means that general navigation of the user interface loses the precision and immediacy that the best devices have. It means you’ll spend more time poking the screen to elicit a response and scrolling isn’t as accurate as you’d like it to be.

That said, Android and HTC Sense have been well designed for touch control, so this isn’t a throwback to the bad old days of Windows Mobile: it still all works as it should, with HTC Sense binding together the Android experience.

We won’t go into detail in HTC Sense here, but if you haven’t heard about it, we’ll run through the highlights. You get five homepages and the ability to flick left and right through them. They can be customised to your liking, adding HTC widgets for major applications like weather, email, Twitter, etc as well as Android widgets or shortcuts to people, applications, bookmarks and so on.

You also get Scenes, so if you want a different homepage selection for work, home, travel or whatever, you can do so. Android already pulls on your Google account for calendars, email and contacts, but Sense takes it a step further, giving you the option to pull in Facebook and Flickr too. It links Facebook and Google contacts, giving you a rich contacts experience, with easy access to an individuals updates, photos and so on. It doesn’t go quite as far as Motorola’s Motoblur, but as a front end to a phone, we can only say that HTC Sense is the way modern mobile phone should be.

You still get those Sense quirks that don’t quite work, like arriving at a “live” widget and finding it isn’t updated, so you have to then wait for the refresh before you get the current information, but the same is true of the Hero. You’ll also get the occasional pause on opening your more information-intensive apps, but nothing devastating.

But the biggest thing you’ll notice is the step down in quality that dropping to QVGA resolution brings. The screen isn’t as sharp as we’d quite like and the smaller size means less space for widgets overall. It also means that you’ll need to view text larger for it to be clear enough to read.

However, if you haven’t been living with a higher resolution device, then this isn’t something that will really bother you and it competes with other compact smartphones, bringing with it both the customisation advantages of the Android platform and the friendly and fun HTC Sense.

But not so fast. As this is a Donut (Android 1.6) device with a lower resolution, there is a marked difference in the Marketplace too. For those that don’t know, the Android Marketplace is where you go to pick up applications. The combination of Donut and QVGA mean that at present not all the apps are available yet. Developers have to recompile their app for 1.6 (which shouldn’t be a problem) as well as make any changes to the user interface to it works with the screen. It’s a process that will take time, but at the time of writing, most of our favourites have not yet made an appearance.

The Browser is good, but really misses multi-touch. It is fast enough, but you are dependent on double tap zooming or zoom buttons at the bottom the screen. The low resolution also means that you need to zoom a lot, because you can’t read the text.

The smaller size and resistive screen also have an impact on the keyboard experience. You get HTC’s keyboard with suggestions, which will smooth out the majority of spelling mistakes, but if you have big fingers, even the landscape QWERTY can be a little small. One advantage though, is that if you have fingernails/false nails (girls, I’m talking to you) you’ll be able to bash out messages using the tips of your nails, something that the Hero won’t let you do.

The hardware specs are comprehensive however. You get HSPDA, you get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well as an FM radio, a commuter favourite. You also get lots of sensory awareness including GPS, accelerometer and a digital compass, so as far as smartphones go it ticks all the right boxes.

To expand the memory there is microSD card slot hiding under the back cover, which you’ll need to store all those pics, videos and music that the Tattoo is waiting to take on. Battery life is fairly average for a connected touch device, giving you about 5 and a half hours of talk time and 20 days on standby. In practise, once you start drawing on all that data you’ll be charging it every night.

Verdict

Overall the HTC Tattoo experience is a good one. Sure, it is a noticeable step down from the Hero and rightly so. You don’t get the same touch response and it doesn’t look as sharp as the Hero. The keyboard experience isn’t as good (with a caveat on long nails) and the browser doesn’t have the same natural experience without multi-touch.

But you don’t lose out on the spec sheet, meaning that you’ll still be able to take advantage of all the smartphone goodness you are looking for with all the Android customisation to make the phone your own, once the Marketplace catches up. The icing on the cake is HTC Sense, which we love.

If you are looking for an affordable and friendly entry to the Android world then the HTC Tattoo is worthy of consideration, but if you can stretch to the Hero, you’ll get so much more out of it.

The bad: Small 2.8-inch QVGA display; narrow buttons for portrait-mode onscreen QWERTY keypad; many Android apps not suited for lower-resolution panel; poor speakerphone.

The bottom line: If you want an affordable Android smartphone, the Tattoo will fit the bill. Power users should look elsewhere.

The HTC Tattoo is the fourth Android device from the Taiwanese company. That’s quite a feat considering many phone-makers committed to the platform have not even released a single product. The Tattoo has one feature that sets it apart as an entry-level smartphone–a resistive 2.8-inch QVGA display. Let’s see how this smaller, lower-resolution screen (compared with the 3-inch and larger HVGA panels) performs coupled with Google’s mobile operating system.

Design

The Tattoo’s 106 x 55.2 x 14mm dimensions and 113g weight make it a compact and light device. The device is solidly built and we like how the rounded edges give it a nice feel in the hands.

Like most full-touchscreen devices, the front of the Tattoo is taken up mainly by the screen. This is a 2.8-inch QVGA LCD, similar to what you find in many older Windows Mobile smartphones. During our use, we found it sufficiently bright and sharp for reading text. Images also displayed nicely. Unfortunately, those who have used devices like the iPhone or HTC Magic, which come with HVGA (480 x 320) screens, may find the halved resolution on the Tattoo lacking. This can be felt mainly when browsing the Internet and trying to type with your fingertips. More on that later when we discuss this smartphone’s features.

You get the standard set of buttons for an Android phone. Aside from the Call and End keys, there are dedicated Home, Menu, Back and Search buttons under the display. A round directional pad is also found there which we felt worked well, thanks to its large circumference and prominent select button. The sides of the Tattoo are bare aside from a volume rocker on the left.
Connectors on this smartphone include a mini-USB for charging and syncing on the base and a 3.5mm audio port on the top. This means you can use your favorite pair of headphones for music playback, a feature that will please those particular about earphone audio fidelity. Memory expansion is possible through a microSD card slot found on the left side under the back battery cover.
With the Tattoo, HTC has provided a way for users to personalize the chassis of the phone. Every single part of the external plastic shell is replaceable. You do that first by removing the battery cover, and from there, the front face plate and back base plate can be pried off completely. The company has partnered with gadget accessory company Garskin to sell replacement shells. The patterns are quite varied and you can even design your own from the Garskin Web site. HTC is giving users a redemption card in the standard sales package which entitles you to one free phone cover. If you want to buy more, they cost US$24.90 each.

Features

Though the Tattoo is supposed to be a budget Android handset, HTC has put a lot of features in this upcoming mobile phone. It comes with HSDPA and Wi-Fi for high-speed data, Bluetooth and GPS for navigation. Powering the phone is a Qualcomm 528MHz processor found in many other high-end HTC phones, too, so that’s good news for this entry-level handset.

One thing we really liked about the Hero, HTC’s last Android device, was the Sense UI interface. This custom software comes with many useful widgets and integration of social-networking services into the contacts. The Tattoo will also sport Sense UI so many of those features will appear on this handset. One widget we did find missing was the Stock app–HTC probably assumed that those using the Tattoo aren’t interested in the stock market.

Back to the matter of the 2.8-inch QVGA screen, it wasn’t perfect, but it was better than we expected. For starters, HTC did a good job scaling down all its widgets to fit this screen, so the seven scrollable displays on the Home page can be well-utilized. For example, the People widget (which shows your favorite contacts so you can access them quickly) has contacts’ photos that are noticeably lower in resolution compared with the Hero’s implementation, but we could still make out the faces.

We did run into some problems with the browser. The small screen meant reading text required zooming into the page. This led to more scrolling just to read a news article or wiki. There was also some frustration when trying to tap on small links. In these cases, we ended up using our fingernails to do the job. This was possible because the LCD is resistive, not capacitive (which requires a fingertip skin contact) like other Android phones.

Somewhat frustrating as well was the onscreen QWERTY keyboard. Keys were really narrow, so typing with the tips of our thumbs became near impossible unless one held the device in landscape mode or had pointy fingernails.
Another consequence of the QVGA screen on the Tattoo is that fewer apps appear on the Android Market. Only programs which developers have tweaked to support multiple resolutions (introduced in Android 1.6) will be available for download. Though we didn’t count exactly how many there are, some of our favorite games were not available. The excellent Twitter app Twidroid had not been ported over as well, last we checked.
A 3.2-megapixel camera is found on the back of the Tattoo. Remember, this is an entry-level handset so there’s no autofocus or LED flash. It produced decent pictures though–just don’t expect too much of it.

Performance

We were impressed with the battery performance of the Tattoo. With background data and Gmail syncing turned on, we got 2.5 days of use on a single charge. This included Web surfing on HSDPA and some phone usage and texting. GPS navigation worked well with Google Maps but we don’t recommend trying to use it for in-car navigation because of the small screen.

Voice quality was good and we didn’t experience any dropped calls during our period of use. One thing that did poorly was the volume of the speakerphone. It was way too soft to be useful unless you were in a quiet room.

Conclusion

For an entry-level smartphone, the Tattoo met our expectations. It does everything you expect an Android device to do, and has great battery life to boot. The screen is a little small, but usable for the most part. Those with large fingers should really try it out at a store before deciding if they can live with the text input.

If you are someone who wants maximum mileage with your Android device, we advise spending a bit more for either the HTC Magic or Hero. This is mainly because developers have designed their apps mostly for HVGA screens for the Android Market.

But for those looking for a capable smartphone on a budget, the Tattoo is a great choice. In fact, we liked it more than the Touch2 (recently reviewed here) which goes for a similar price. The compromises made in the Tattoo are acceptable considering the cost. We don’t recommend paying the full S$598 (US$431) retail price, but anything under S$200 (US$144) with a basic operator plan would be a fair deal for this Android smartphone.

RAM: 256 MB Dimensions (LxWxT) 106 x 55.2 x 14 mm ( 4.17 x 2.17 x 0.55 inches) Weight 113 grams ( 3.99 ounces) with battery Display 2.8-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 240×320 QVGA resolution Network HSDPA/WCDMA:

• Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
• Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:

• 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

(Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)

Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g

HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0)

3.5 mm audio jack Camera 3.2 megapixel color camera Audio supported formats MP3, AAC(AAC, AAC+, AAC-LC), AMR-NB, WAV, MIDI and Windows Media Audio 9 Video supported formats MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media® Video 9 Battery Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery

Capacity: 1100 mAh

Talk time:

• Up to 342 minutes for WCDMA
• Up to 390 minutes for GSM

Standby time:

• Up to 520 hours for WCDMA
• Up to 340 hours for GSM

(The above are subject to network and phone usage.)

DC output: 5V and 1A Special Features G-sensor

Digital Compass

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