Best cheap Android phones

The HTC Tattoo, a bargain version of the company’s flagship phones, is like an elderly HTC Hero — shrunken and less perky, but still with plenty of fun times left in the tank. You’ll definitely notice the corners that have been cut — the resistive touchscreen is especially annoying — but, if you’re looking to save some pennies, you can’t beat a bargain handset that offers all the power of an Android smart phone.
The Tattoo is available from free on a £25-per-month, 18-month contract, or for around £290 SIM-free.
Android for all
The Tattoo offers the same powerful Android operating system and social-networking goodies as the Hero, but in a cheaper, smaller phone. That means you can have all the power of a handset running Android — a usable, feature-packed smart-phone operating system — at a price that would usually score you a more stripped-down phone.
The Tattoo comes with a good suite of applications pre-installed, including Google Maps, a Twitter app and a YouTube app. If they’re not enough, the Tattoo will also allow you to shop in the Android Market, which hosts heaps of little programs that give the phone even more powers. Happily, many of the apps in the Android Market are free, and it does a good job of making it easy to download and install everything from Spotify to Skype.

The 71mm resistive touchscreen is the Tattoo’s weak point, but the Android software is as great as usual

HTC has also iced the Android cake with its Sense user interface — the same one we raved about on the HTC Hero. There are seven home screens, which you can customise to your heart’s delight with wallpapers and widgets. These include Twitter and email widgets that show your missives as they pop-up in real-time, without requiring you to open an app, like you would on the iPhone, for example.
You can also change your whole configuration, depending on your mood, by creating your own themes, known as ‘scenes’. For example, you may want to see your work calendar during the week, but avoid it at all costs during the weekend. Your ‘weekend’ scene might show your music-player widget instead. But the phone is also well set-up right out of the box, so you don’t have to change anything if you don’t want to.
Kiss my Facebook
We also love the way Sense grabs our Facebook and Gmail contacts and merges them together into our address book, so we can see the smiling profile pics of our chums on our phone.
The Tattoo also pulls in your Facebook and Flickr photo albums, and your friends’ albums, and shows their snaps alongside their contact info. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support any other social-networking sites, like MySpace or Bebo. You can get apps and widgets for those sites from the Android Market, though.
Ouch — my fingers!
HTC hasn’t short-changed us with the Tattoo’s software, but the hardware is another story. To cut the price, the company’s plunked a resistive touchscreen onto the handset, and that breaks our little hearts. The screen requires the pressure of a fingernail to register inputs, and it’s just not as pleasant to use Android when you can’t swipe over the screen with wild abandon. Instead, each selection has to be a slow and deliberate, and, if you don’t have fingernails to speak of, you’re stuffed. It doesn’t help that the touchscreen is also smaller than average, measuring only 71mm (2.8 inches).
The teeny, resistive touchscreen makes typing a chore. It’s great that there’s a choice of a virtual Qwerty keyboard, alphanumeric keyboard, and compact Qwerty effort with two letters on each on-screen key. But, despite these options and fairly good predictive text, the screen’s unresponsiveness means you have to take your time when typing.
Cover it up
Despite its shortcomings, we couldn’t help but cheer up when we saw the Tattoo’s selection of switchable covers. Our sample phone had a cheeky representation of Android peeping out at us from its silver case, but you can pick up plenty more colourful options online for about £11 each. If you’re really feeling creative, you can design your own cover for about £13, including layers of your own photos and text.
We gave the online cover-design feature a go, and could have spent hours tweaking our handset’s appearance. We wish every smart phone came with this fun extra.
Conclusion
The HTC Tattoo doesn’t skimp in the software department, providing all of the power of Android, plus the Hero’s social-networking extras. But you’ll miss out on the pleasure of using a big, bright, responsive touchscreen. If you bite your nails, stay away from this phone. For those who don’t, we’d recommend the Tattoo above its bargain competitors, such as the Samsung Tocco Lite.

Key Specs

Product type	Budget phone
GPS	Yes
Form factor	Candy-bar
Available colours	Silver
Screen size	0.1 in.
Camera resolution	3.2 megapixels
Weight	113 g

Camera

LED photo light	No
Video recording	Yes
Flash	No
Camera resolution	3.2 megapixels

Connectivity

Infrared	No
Bluetooth	Yes
WiFi	Yes
USB	Yes
GPS receiver	Yes

General

Form factor	Candy-bar
Size (W x H x D)	55 x 106 x 14 mm
Battery type	Li-ion
GSM frequencies	850, 900, 1800, 1900
GPRS	Yes
3G	Yes
HDSPA	Yes
Available colours	Silver
Weight	113 g
Talk time (mfr)	342 min
Standby time (mfr)	6.5 hours

Memory

Memory expansion	Yes
Memory card type	microSD
On-board memory	512 MB

Messaging and data

Short Messaging Service (SMS)	Yes
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)	Yes
Internet browser	Yes
E-mail client	Yes
Java	Yes

Music/radio

Music playback	Yes
Supported formats	MP3, AAC (AAC, AAC+, AAC-LC), AMR-NB, WAV, MIDI, Windows Media Audio 9
FM radio	No
Headphone socket	3.5mm

PDA features

Operating system	Google Android
Synchronisation software	HTC Sync

Phone

Vibrating alert	Yes
Calendar	Yes

Display

Main screen (W x H)	42 x 56 mm
Resolution	240×320 pixels