Face it, Tattoos aren’t cool any more.

In case you missed it today, HTC announced its fourth Android device, the “Tattoo” (which was formerly called “Click”.)

Everybody’s expecting it to be the cheapest Android phone yet, which is itself an exciting possibility, but I look at the device with absolute boredom.

I see you have a tattoo. You are 88% more likely to be a douchebag.

Design-wise, it’s HTC’s third all-touch Android phone in a row (if you don’t count local variations,) and the only unique thing it has going for it is its faceplate changeability.

Once you get into cosmetic “improvements” like that, I get extremely, violently, bored. Any time a company gets into the business of slapping prefabricated “art” on my tech devices, I want to give said company a flying axe handle to the head. I don’t want to see tribal tattoos or urban camouflage on ANYTHING much less on the device which I will prominently hold up to my face in public or have sitting on my lap for hours on end.

Get that shit away from me NOW.

Art-related stuff like Dell Studio notebooks and iGoogle skins I can get down with. Those prominently feature the artists’ names and are unique to their tastes and talents. There is absolutely nothing unique about the shit they’re slapping on the HTC Tattoo. Even the name offends me…I feel like that’s up there in bad names with Motorola Rokr. Why not just name it the HTC BAD BOYZ or something?

Furthermore, this gets into the realm of things that I hate: The separation of “Tattoo” from “Art.” But that’s a rant for a non-tech blog or a day where I have more time to bitch.

On a more fundamental level though, there’s another issue with the Tattoo.

Reportedly, it has been equipped with a resistive touchscreen to get to its lower pricetag. I know how sucky a bad resistive touchscreen can get. You ever use a Chumby? HA. They say you don’t need a stylus for it, but you just try setting an alarm on that thing without one. Resistive touchscreens make me think of business geeks with a coke nail that they grew to make interaction with their phone easier because they don’t want to have to whip out a stylus.

But this brings me to my main issue. I know quite well that Android is a touch OS; but when you’re a big company in the business of making internationally distributed consumer electronics devices, how hard would it be, really, to port Android down to a non-touch device if you’re just looking to save money? Rather than attempt to preserve the experience you’d get with a capacitive touchscreen, you just create a new button-based experience.

I’d love to see a BlackBerry-style Android device. HTC makes the Dash and the Ozone and they’re fantastically comfortable devices. I know..I know, I favor keyboards. I’m sorry. But I strongly believe that anyone who’s had to rely on a smartphone in a high-pressure work situation will agree with me: hard keys are needed for hard work.

We’ve got devices from Motorola coming this week, and some from LG on the horizon. They all at least have keyboards, but what I’m really looking for from HTC is something like the BlackBerry Bold: a smaller touchscreen and a full candybar keyboard. Or hell, just a re-designed Android interface that we can drop into non-touch devices.