HTC Tattoo is the first budget-friendly smartphone to run on Android version 1.6 (Donut) operating system with the much-applauded Sense UI.

It provides users with an improved Android Market experience, updated and improved speed in search experience, faster response, deeper integration with its application, and so on and so forth. Although HTC may have compromised some of Tattoo’s hardware to provide the budget conscious consumer a cheaper android phone, still the experience is priceless.

Clearly, innovation, style and function were well thought of. What amazes me is how integrated things are and still focused on individuality. It is all about freedom; freedom to be what you want to be down from the phone’s cover up to its user interface.

Let’s take the mainscreen/homescreens. Thanks to HTC’s Sense UI, there are 7 homescreens ready to be dressed up. Transition between homescreens is smooth and quick with just a finger flick. Evidently, Tattoo has more than enough space for the user to play and fill up with HTC and Android widgets, shortcuts and folders.

By default, a large digital, location-based clock reigns the main homescreen. In it are the date, temperature and weather updated at regular intervals.

Below this time/weather widget are 4 shortcuts namely People (contacts) that allows you to do different actions for different contacts right at your desktop, Messages, Browser and the Camera.

There are 6 scenes (HTC, social, work, play, travel and a clean slate) that you can choose from depending on the user’s preferences or priorities.

If weekends are for friends, families and keeping up with your “social” life then the “social” scene is right for you and when the weekend is over you can then switch to “work” scene to get you to your work mode the rest of the week.

Changing from one scene to another takes a few seconds, but it does work well. Again, these homescreens are fairly much flexible and can be designed according to your needs and purpose.

They are there for convenience so you won’t have to navigate through different options and settings to get things done and dressing them up the way you want it to be is just part of the fun.

Another thumbs up for the Sense UI is its social network integration or its ability to merge Facebook, Twitter and Gmail contacts in to your phonebook. When you click on People it’ll show your contacts and their corresponding Facebook or Twitter profiles pictures, updates and events.

Cool! What’s even cooler is through the phone’s gallery you can view the pictures your contacts have posted on these social network sites. Sweet!

The Tattoo is packed with pre-installed applications such as Google Maps, You Tube, Peeps (a Twitter app), Plurk, etc. and if this is not enough you can shop for more applications on the Android Market (similar to the iTunes store) containing loads of free applications that you can easily download and install.

Texting and typing is easy although it requires a bit of pressure having a resistive touchscreen. Furthermore because of its screen size, texting on its usual portrait mode became a bit of a challenge as the letters and numbers appear too small and cramped.

There is a bit of a lag; taking a few more seconds than the usual to switch from portrait to landscape; nevertheless I would still often switch to landscape, as it is easier to type because the letters appear bigger.

You can connect to the internet easily via WiFi, over HSDPA, Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity and since Tattoo is equipped with Android 1.6 version, browsing the internet is much faster.

Getting on the web is effortless. Just choose the browser and type in the address. It gets even easier when you use the bookmarks placed on one of the homescreens.

Loading of web pages was considerably fast. Navigating a web page on a touchscreen requires a bit of pressure and as mentioned previously, do not expect the “two-finger pinch to zoom” function. There is a zoom function at the bottom of the screen and you can likewise double tap the screen to view text and images on a larger scale.

HTC Tattoo is pretty impressive overall. HTC may have had skimmed a bit of Tattoo’s hardware just to come up with a mid-range Android smartphone; nonetheless, the power of an Android OS is still brilliantly intact in this cool and nifty gadget.