Review of HTC Wildfire
Price: Rs 15,199
Summary
The HTC Wildfire is the least expensive Android mobile phone from HTC's stables.
Pros:
* Wi-Fi, GPS & 3G support
* Very good Web browser
* Google Mobile Services & Android Market support
* Good Looking
* Excellent Call Reception & Quality
Cons:
* Poor Low-Res Screen
* Terrible, terrible camera for outdoor shots
Full Review
From its origins as an OEM, HTC has grown from strength to strength and now comfortably rests as one of the top smartphone manufacturers in the world. To understand HTC’s success story, you need to look no further than their excellent Android smartphones. From the HTC Magic to the HTC Incredible, these devices have impressed most Android aficionados and general smartphone buyers thanks to their combination of looks, style, User Interface and features. The HTC Wildfire is new to party and joins the HTC family as the least expensive Android smartphone in their portfolio. Let’s take a look at how it does.
Features & Specifications
The HTC Wildfire is an Android 2.1 device with a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and a 5MP camera. The display has a resolution of 320x240 and a color output of 16M colors. The Wildfire maintains its smartphone credentials by providing all possible connectivity features including Wi-Fi, 3G and GPS support. It has a microUSB port for the data cable and charger and a 3.5mm jack for headphones. The Wildfire also has 384MB of internal memory and supports microSD cards up to 32GB.
Like other HTC devices, the Wildfire’s vanilla Android UI is topped off by HTC’s very own Sense UI. It also comes with plenty of pre-installed apps that make use of Google’s Mobile Services including a dedicated Gmail app, Google Maps, Google Talk and a YouTube app. Other pre-installed apps include FriendStream that you can use to keep a tab on your social networks and Peep, a mobile app to help you Tweet. Of course for additional apps you can always access the Android Market directly from your phone and download to your heart’s content.
Design & Usability
The HTC Wildfire is certainly a unique looking device with somewhat of a squat build. Instead of going for a narrow, long look, the Wildfire is wider than most mobiles that sport a 3.2-inch screen. However, it looks far from ugly and even with the usual HTC color scheme of black and grey; it looks classy rather than drab and boring. The Wildfire is also strongly built and uses good quantities of rubberized plastic, metal and glass.
Granted the HTC Wildfire has a capacitive touchscreen, but I felt the touch response could have been much better. Yes, the touch was better than a resistive screen but it still fell short of the standards set by the capacitive screens of the Samsung Wave or the HTC Legend. The Wildfire offers seven homescreens, all of which can be customized with shortcuts, folders and widgets. The virtual keyboard is accurate in both landscape and portrait modes, although it was quite difficult to use both thumbs to type in portrait mode and I missed an alpha-numeric keypad. There is an optical trackpad below the screen and although, it’s well-meant, I hardly felt the need to use it.
The Wildfire’s 3.2-inch screen is sufficiently large but disappointingly low-res. Although, the Sense UI and Android UI usually look really good and colorful, the Wildfire’s display doesn’t do justice to them. This poor performance carries over into sunlight legibility as well.
Browsing, Multimedia etc.
The HTC Wildfire sports a very good Web browser that not only renders pages well but also has features like multi-tab support, text selection, etc. Another of the browser’s nice features is that it resizes text on pages to fit the screen which is helpful when wanting to read plenty of text based pages.
For what looks like a barebones media player with no sound enhancement options, the Wildfire’s basic player plays music well. Bass is thumpy and overall the phone is suited for listening to all kinds of music (the speaker could have been louder).
The Wildfire necessitates the use of an external application to convert and transfer videos. It plays videos at crisp frame-rates and the big (albeit bad looking) screen is sufficient to watch a movie on.
The Wildfire’s 5MP camera is really disappointing. It appeared as if HTC didn’t test the camera before launching the phone because outdoor shots under sunlight had terrible white balance issues and there was a very discernable blue-tint in all photos. Indoor photos were much better thanks to auto-focus but there was still some loss of detail and the images looked as if they had been shot in soft-focus. The powerful flash meant that low-light images looked good. The videos I recorded looked good enough for watching on the screen but not so much on the computer screen.
I was able to use the Wildfire comfortably for over a day without needing to charge it. The Wildfire gives clear, balanced call quality. It also maintains consistent reception and minimum in-call distortion.
Bottom Line
The HTC Wildfire is priced in India at Rs. 15,199. As a mid-segment smartphone, the HTC Wildfire will get plenty of attention and deserves it. However, if you are looking for a phone to blow you away, the Wildfire isn’t the one you are looking for. It offers decent features, performance and usability and manages to mostly stay away from the pits, except in the case of its camera and screen. If you are looking for a smartphone around the same price-point with a better camera, then the Nokia X6 is a better option. In case you only want to consider an Android smartphone, then the X10 Mini (or the X10 Mini Pro with a hardware QWERTY keyboard and Rs. 1,000 pricier) is a better buy (provided you are okay with the tiny screen and super-cutesy looks). Overall though, at its price I can recommend the HTC Wildfire as a good buy.
Specification of HTC Wildfire
Price: Rs 15,199
Summary
The HTC Wildfire is the least expensive Android mobile phone from HTC's stables.
Pros:
* Wi-Fi, GPS & 3G support
* Very good Web browser
* Google Mobile Services & Android Market support
* Good Looking
* Excellent Call Reception & Quality
Cons:
* Poor Low-Res Screen
* Terrible, terrible camera for outdoor shots
Full ReviewFrom its origins as an OEM, HTC has grown from strength to strength and now comfortably rests as one of the top smartphone manufacturers in the world. To understand HTC’s success story, you need to look no further than their excellent Android smartphones. From the HTC Magic to the HTC Incredible, these devices have impressed most Android aficionados and general smartphone buyers thanks to their combination of looks, style, User Interface and features. The HTC Wildfire is new to party and joins the HTC family as the least expensive Android smartphone in their portfolio. Let’s take a look at how it does.
Features & SpecificationsThe HTC Wildfire is an Android 2.1 device with a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and a 5MP camera. The display has a resolution of 320x240 and a color output of 16M colors. The Wildfire maintains its smartphone credentials by providing all possible connectivity features including Wi-Fi, 3G and GPS support. It has a microUSB port for the data cable and charger and a 3.5mm jack for headphones. The Wildfire also has 384MB of internal memory and supports microSD cards up to 32GB.
Like other HTC devices, the Wildfire’s vanilla Android UI is topped off by HTC’s very own Sense UI. It also comes with plenty of pre-installed apps that make use of Google’s Mobile Services including a dedicated Gmail app, Google Maps, Google Talk and a YouTube app. Other pre-installed apps include FriendStream that you can use to keep a tab on your social networks and Peep, a mobile app to help you Tweet. Of course for additional apps you can always access the Android Market directly from your phone and download to your heart’s content.
Design & UsabilityThe HTC Wildfire is certainly a unique looking device with somewhat of a squat build. Instead of going for a narrow, long look, the Wildfire is wider than most mobiles that sport a 3.2-inch screen. However, it looks far from ugly and even with the usual HTC color scheme of black and grey; it looks classy rather than drab and boring. The Wildfire is also strongly built and uses good quantities of rubberized plastic, metal and glass.
Granted the HTC Wildfire has a capacitive touchscreen, but I felt the touch response could have been much better. Yes, the touch was better than a resistive screen but it still fell short of the standards set by the capacitive screens of the Samsung Wave or the HTC Legend. The Wildfire offers seven homescreens, all of which can be customized with shortcuts, folders and widgets. The virtual keyboard is accurate in both landscape and portrait modes, although it was quite difficult to use both thumbs to type in portrait mode and I missed an alpha-numeric keypad. There is an optical trackpad below the screen and although, it’s well-meant, I hardly felt the need to use it.
The Wildfire’s 3.2-inch screen is sufficiently large but disappointingly low-res. Although, the Sense UI and Android UI usually look really good and colorful, the Wildfire’s display doesn’t do justice to them. This poor performance carries over into sunlight legibility as well.
Browsing, Multimedia etc.
The HTC Wildfire sports a very good Web browser that not only renders pages well but also has features like multi-tab support, text selection, etc. Another of the browser’s nice features is that it resizes text on pages to fit the screen which is helpful when wanting to read plenty of text based pages.
For what looks like a barebones media player with no sound enhancement options, the Wildfire’s basic player plays music well. Bass is thumpy and overall the phone is suited for listening to all kinds of music (the speaker could have been louder).
The Wildfire necessitates the use of an external application to convert and transfer videos. It plays videos at crisp frame-rates and the big (albeit bad looking) screen is sufficient to watch a movie on.
The Wildfire’s 5MP camera is really disappointing. It appeared as if HTC didn’t test the camera before launching the phone because outdoor shots under sunlight had terrible white balance issues and there was a very discernable blue-tint in all photos. Indoor photos were much better thanks to auto-focus but there was still some loss of detail and the images looked as if they had been shot in soft-focus. The powerful flash meant that low-light images looked good. The videos I recorded looked good enough for watching on the screen but not so much on the computer screen.
I was able to use the Wildfire comfortably for over a day without needing to charge it. The Wildfire gives clear, balanced call quality. It also maintains consistent reception and minimum in-call distortion.
Bottom Line
The HTC Wildfire is priced in India at Rs. 15,199. As a mid-segment smartphone, the HTC Wildfire will get plenty of attention and deserves it. However, if you are looking for a phone to blow you away, the Wildfire isn’t the one you are looking for. It offers decent features, performance and usability and manages to mostly stay away from the pits, except in the case of its camera and screen. If you are looking for a smartphone around the same price-point with a better camera, then the Nokia X6 is a better option. In case you only want to consider an Android smartphone, then the X10 Mini (or the X10 Mini Pro with a hardware QWERTY keyboard and Rs. 1,000 pricier) is a better buy (provided you are okay with the tiny screen and super-cutesy looks). Overall though, at its price I can recommend the HTC Wildfire as a good buy.
Specification of HTC Wildfire
Specs at a glance:
| Screen Size | 3.2-inch |
| Screen Resolution | 320x240 |
| Touchscreen | Yes |
| OS | Android v2.1 |
| Internal Storage | 384MB |
| Memory Card Slot | Yes |
| Camera | 5MP |
| GPS | Yes |
| 3G/Wi-Fi Connectivity | Yes/Yes |
| Talktime | 7 hours |
Full Performance:
| Call Reception Quality | Superior |
| Messaging | Very Good |
| Browsing | Very Good |
| Imaging | Poor |
| Audio/Video playback | Good/Good |
| Gaming | Good |
| Battery Life | Good |
| Screen Quality | Poor |
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