The HTC Wildfire draws a big line in the sand for Taiwanese phone peddler HTC. It’s bumped off the HTC Tattoo as its low end Android offering, and switched out its poky resistive screen for a finger friendly, iPhone style capacitive display. Combined with HTC Sense, Android 2.1 and a spangly five megapixel camera, it promises to redefine what a budget Android phone should be. Does it live up to expectations? Read on and we’ll break it down for you in our HTC Wildfire review.
Read the rest of our HTC Wildfire review now
HTC Wildfire review: Android 2.1
HTC Wildfire review: Build and touchscreen
HTC Wildfire review: Other Android options
HTC Wildfire review: Ultimate buyer’s guide
Forget the HTC Tattoo and Windows Mobile fuelled HTC Touch2. On the inside, the HTC Wildfire has much more in common with the once high end HTC Hero than either budget blower, and on the outside, the build and aesthetics of an HTC Desire. It’s a welcome move from the company, and it’s picked just the right compromises to bring the price down without ruining the experience – something that Huawei failed to accomplish when it made a Faustian pact to bring out the £99 T-Mobile Pulse Mini earlier this year.
Though it eschews the name, the HTC Wildfire really is a mini HTC Desire in many respects – and considering we gave that the full five stars, that’s a great start. It’s rocking the same curves, optical trackpad and plastic, yet smudge resistant casing, but on a smaller scale: the display is 3.2-inches wide, rather than 3.7, and traditional TFT rather than eye popping and expensive AMOLED.
Sensibly though, shrinking down a HTC Desire doesn’t make the HTC Wildfire tricky to type with or squint inducing, as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini is – but just the right size for all the biggest hands. Because the screen is still capacitive, you can use the pads of your fingers and it’ll register them without fail – you won’t have to resort to using your nails to make precise taps as you did on the HTC Tattoo.
The HTC Wildfire’s biggest compromise however is its most visible: while the screen is large and responsive, it’s also extremely low resolution (QVGA, 320×240). In fact, as far as we know, it has the lowest pixel density of any Android phone released in the UK (Other QVGA Android phones have used much smaller displays).
We’re not being mere pixel pedants when we say this though as it really does make a difference. While pinch to zoom gestures work just fine on the HTC Wildfire’s screen, pictures and text looks grainy, and it ends up displaying web pages as very thin columns with large fonts and very few words per line – not exactly great for reading your favourite internet sites or long emails regularly.
For the undemanding, HTC’s Sense software on the HTC Wildfire more than makes up for this. It’s the updated version of the social networking skin, on top of Android 2.1, as seen on the HTC Desire and Legend, and for the target audience, it works wonders. Seeing status updates on top of the quick contacts bar, as well as Facebook piccies, makes the HTC Wildfire a super convenient messaging phone which requires the minimum of set up, and Android 2.1 means technophobes won’t run up against any walls when they try to add two Gmail accounts or use Google Maps Navigation.
However, the HTC Wildfire uses the same processor as last year’s Hero, and that means it suffers similar lag – you’ll often run into loading messages and FriendStream’s inertial scrolling pretty much ceases to be – but if you’re going to push your Android phone to the limit, you’ve probably got your eyes on a Google Nexus One anyway.
For those on a mid-range budget looking for an easy way to stay in touch, our only real reservation is that the HTC Hero itself could prove a worthy rival to the HTC Wildfire as soon as that fabled Sense Android 2.1 update hits. It’s been out for a year now, but it’s still on sale (For an extra £50 upfront, and £2.50 per month more on Orange), and the battery life of the HTC Wildfire isn’t any better (a day, just). The Hero’s screen is thinner but sharper, and in tests, we found typing was still swifter and more responsive on it than the HTC Wildfire.
Depending on how the Android 2.1 update (Which HTC swears blind is just around the corner) affect’s the Hero’s performance, we’d consider plumping for its sharper display, even if it does mean having to put up with a bobbly trackball rather than a subtle and practical optical trackpad. And did we mention the speedy, beautiful HTC Legend can be had for only a fiver more per month (On Vodafone tariffs at least)?
Still, when the competition is with other HTC models and not competitors, it speaks volume about the quality of the HTC Wildfire.
Read the rest of our HTC Wildfire review now
HTC Wildfire review: Android 2.1
HTC Wildfire review: Build and touchscreen
HTC Wildfire review: Other Android options
HTC Wildfire review: Ultimate buyer’s guide
