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Tattoo – a new (cheaper) Android phone from HTC

No surprise that (almost) nobody is interested in the launch of a Motorola Android handset. Instead, all the excitement this week is generated by two new HTC Android phones: the Tattoo, and the Hero – the third and fourth Android machines from the Taiwanese company. Tattoo is for Europe (October) while the Hero is now launching in Asia.

HTC's move towards Google is seen as the blackest treachery inside Microsoft, of course, the company which virtually created the HTC phone business when they switched patronage from Sendo. But HTC seems to think there's a good future in Android, and the market seems to like what it has seen in preview.

The big deal with Hero and Tattoo is "personalization" – you can customize the phone.

In the words of the official announcement: "the Tattoo is an Android-based phone that brings broad personalization to the masses."

The software which does this has already been previewed on the Hero: HTC Sense, announced back in June as "a mobile experience focused on putting people at the centre by making your phone work in a more simple and natural way." It involves three menus: Make it Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected.

We're still not convinced by these "build your own interface" ideas, but maybe Android is a better underlying platform for experiment? Certainly HTC is encouraging us to buy-and-try, because the pricing will be (they promised!) pretty cheap. But the spec isn't a budget phone at all; it's pretty feature rich.

As you can see from the illustration, it's a touch-screen phone, with permanent buttons for basic (home, dial, hangup, goback, search and menu) and a joystick. Nice, but you can only find out how nice by trying one out in a shop; can't do that till October, unless you reckon a Hero will give a good enough test bed?

Camera is, by standards of 2010, modest – 3.2 megapixels. So no need for huge storage to hold your snaps. This time next year, we'd expect mid-range smartphones to have better than 5 megapixel cameras – like the HTC Hero does - everywhere except the American markets. And we'd expect top-of range machines to have 10 and 11 megapixels, with multiple G of memory.

The Tattoo screen is half the size of the half-VGA display on the Hero. QVGA may be where HTC is saving its costs. Then again, it's quite a bit smaller altogether than the Hero, which is probably what HTC advertising means by "an Android phone for everybody" – an easier way to try the new system out, maybe, than an iPhone-sized beast?

Hard to know exactly what sort of deal you can get on price, but we'd say that if your contract is below twenty quid or thirty Euros, and they ask less than 50 pounds, then it might be good value.

With HTC Tattoo, you stay close to the important people in your life by integrating your communications and applications including voice calls, emails, texts, photos and status updates into one consolidated view, providing innovative and fun phone experiences.

With its distinct design and ability to personalize all aspects of the phone, from its hardware to its applications and content, people are able to express themselves and create their own individual mobile experience.