HTC Wildfire review

There’s been a proliferation of budget smartphones hitting the market over the past few months and all of which promise to bring smartphone attributes, such as connectivity, social networking and speed to users for a fraction of the normal cost usually associated with high-end devices.

But are they actually any good, or just a cheap – and altogether inferior – alternatives? We take a look one such device, the HTC Wildfire.

If you’ve seen any snaps of the HTC Wildfire, and you’d have to have been under a rock for the past month not to, you’ll know that it looks a hell of a lot like the HTC Desire – just without all the high-end jazz and trimmings.

However, the Wildfire isn’t a device to be taken lightly and does feature both Android 2.1 and a processor that’s on a par with the found in the HTC Hero. So in this sense, it’s as good as the Hero, but as we all know the Hero is pretty much done and dusted, Android 2.1 update or not.

So, if you’re thinking about getting a Hero, should you be looking at the HTC Wildfire instead? Well, probably not. For starters, there’s none of the glitz and glammer associated with the Wildfire like there was with the HTC Hero – and this is immediately obvious once you get the device out of the box.

For example, the HTC Wildfire’s non-AMOLED, 240 x 320 pixel screen is very disappointing and pixelated.

So if you’re used to higher-end AMOLED screen-touting smartphones like the HTC Hero, this will come as quite a big disappointment.

Fortunately, HTC’s Sense UI and the Android 2.1 OS make up for this and work seamlessly on the Wildfire to create an engaging and intuitive user experience – in fact, you’d probably be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Wildfire and the Desire after a heavy session in the pub.

As expected, you get all the Android 2.1 delights, such as Friend Stream, access to the new-and-vastly-improved Android Market, a load of new onboard apps and widgets – like News and a dedicated Google search bar – as well as all the operational improvements Android has introduced.

In short, Android 2.1 is brilliant and it works flawlessly on the Wildfire – and if you’re used to 1.5 or 1.6, you’re in for an even bigger treat.

On the physical side of things, the HTC Wildfire does look like a mini version of the HTC Desire and this is definitely a good thing as the Desire is a very well designed device.

Obviously, it’s not as good, powerful or as impressive as the Desire, but it’s certainly up there with the HTC Hero in our eyes – especially in terms of processing power.

Another rather schonky aspect of the Wildfire is when it switches from landscape to portrait.

Usually, when a device does this it’s a smooth transition and the screen, magically, switches itself around in a matter of milliseconds. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with the HTC Wildfire – it just disappears and re-appears and this does look a little cheap.

The camera on the other hand is very good, giving you 5-megapixels, touch-to-focus, face and smile detection, LED flash and geo-tagging to play around with.

Consequently, the video isn’t all that, which is a little unfortunate – but it’s still leaps and bounds better than a significant number of the budget-smartphones currently doing the rounds at present.  

We also really liked the inclusion of an optical trackpad as well, which makes navigating both web pages, menus and apps an extremely intuitive and rewarding experience – why HTC didn’t include one on the Hero is beyond us!

The device, in hand, is also very lightweight but without feeling cheap or flimsy. The HTC Wildfire weighs in at 118g and, while it might not be the lightest phone in the world, it’s certainly a welcome change to review a budget device that doesn’t weight the same as an actual brick.

Another nice aspect of the Wildfire is the four touch sensitive controls, which are located just below the touchscreen and serve as shortcuts to Home, Menu, Back and Search. We really liked this addition to the Wildfire and were impressed with both the sensitivity and usefulness of them – we used the Search button a LOT during testing.

In short, this is a very good device, it has the processing power of the Hero and Android 2.1 onboard as standard, and, for this reason, if we were in the market for a budget-smartphone the HTC Wildfire would certainly be our first port of call.

Granted, it’s not perfect and its screen resolution is awful, but in the grand scheme of things it is a brilliant device and the perfect phone for anyone that wants to have a smartphone – just without the massive price tag!

And for this reason, we’d highly recommend this device to anyone – it’s fast and powerful and Android 2.1 coupled with HTC’s Sense UI is a match made in heaven. In short, the HTC Wildfire is a winner.

Recycle your phone: Sell HTC Wildfire