HTC Wildfire Review

Available from Clove for £229.13

The HTC Wildfire is the latest in a long line of HTC Android devices sporting a name that would be more suited to an after shave lotion. We have had ‘Tattoo’, ‘Hero’, ‘Legend’ and the ‘Desire’ and it’s as if HTC has employed someone called Flavio who sweeps into the office, flicks his hair over his pin-striped tank top, and announces the name for the next HTC Android smartphone. “We shall call it the ‘HTC Love Probe’! to which he receives a smattering of applause from sensible people who wonder what on Earth is going on. Curiously HTC has stuck with quite boring names for its Windows Mobile devices; the Touch Pro, HD and Snap are just a few examples. Anyway, whatever it is called does not really matter because it’s the quality of the hardware and software that counts. I won’t go into much detail about the software because it is running Android 2.1 and I covered this heavily in my Samsung Galaxy S review http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2010/06/samsung-galaxy-s-review-part-three/. Like Samsung, HTC adds its own flavour to the mix and I will look at these, but you should know what you are getting with Android these days.

The box is typically Apple HTC and comes with the bare minimum of accessories. You get a pair of 3.5mm standard headphones, a USB charge/sync cable and a curiously designed AC adaptor. The USB part has to be twisted on to connect to the three pronged plug which looks great, but can be inconvenient if you happen to have all of your plugs sat under a desk with little room above them, like me. On the plus side it does mean that the plug will fit into a multiple socket without any problems so it will suit most people. Of course it looks daft sticking out of a wall and little children will likely break it on the first day, but you can charge via USB and that is likely to be the most used solution anyway.

Design

The Wildfire is a seriously smart looking phone and is shorter than most others in the market, apart from the stupidly designed Xperia X10, and presents a slab-like form that sinks into the hand perfectly. There are of course compromises with a phone of this size, but at 3.2” the screen is not one, at least not dimensionally. The materials used feel just right as well; they are not super expensive like the iPhone 4 and do not exhibit the cheapness of some other phones. The Wildfire build quality and materials perfectly represent where it sits in the market. Of all the phones I have reviewed recently, it is likely that the Wildfire will appeal to more people than any other.

The optical trackpad below the screen is a stroke of design genius in my view and works as good as it looks. However, I never used a trackpad with an Android phone and still don’t understand why they are included. Volumes keys are nicely positioned on the left above the MicroUSB which should be at the bottom, the headphone jack and on/off keys are in the right places though on the top. Below the screen you get 4 buttons which are part of the screen (i.e. no tactile feedback) and they are the standard home, menu, back and search offerings. Overall I like the Wildfire design very much indeed and can see it attracting many a customer perusing phone shops because it has the look of a mini Desire, but at a much lower price.

Screen

Screens are all important in 2010 and we are now entering a time when they are able to offer pin-sharp resolution that is viewable in all conditions. At 240×320 pixels the Wildfire is one of very few smartphones offering only QVGA and this is disappointing even at this price point. In the real world most customers will not notice the fact that it is packing a QVGA screen, but the presentation in almost every part of the system falls slightly on this point alone. In bright sunlight it is much easier to see that I expected which adds to the confusion- it works well in most conditions so is of good quality, but the resolution is at odds with the rest of the hardware. It is capacitive (LCD) which obviously means that fingers are the tools you should use to drive this phone, but it has not proved to be as accurate as other phones using this technology- I suspect that a small software update will come along to fix that.

Performance

528 MHz, 512Mb of ROM and 384MB of RAM sounds pretty good for a device retailing at just over £200 and it is, but there are times when the performance slows a little. Don’t get me wrong, it is far from a slouch, but intense multi-tasking will bring about an inevitable drop in speed. In a short space of time the entire smartphone industry has moved to a place where perfect screens and super fast performance all of the time are expected, even on budget devices, and I am surprised at how quickly I have fallen into the trap of expecting such perfection. However, there are some problems present that are performance related; data entry is difficult because the keyboard does not react quickly and Flash web browsing is painfully slow all of the time. If I step away for a moment and think about things I realise that the Wildfire is quite a performer within the class of smartphones it has to do battle with, but there are compromises required to get the most out of it.

Voice and Signal

Much, much better than I expected. I have had a constant HSDPA signal in my house which is unheard of. Can someone explain to me why the Desire and Legend cannot do that? The Wildfire should not have such a good radio in it, but so far I have been more than impressed. Throw in great sound quality and a speakerphone which exceeds expectations and this looks like a smartphone which has not forgotten the ‘phone’ bit. Well done HTC, and Flavio.

Camera

HTC has cleverly ignored the camera setups it supplied on the later Android phone such as the Desire and Nexus One and decided to implement a camera which is roughly as good as they were 3 years ago. It is rated at 5 Megapixels, has auto-focus, a flash and Geotagging and it is not great.

Stills come out OK if you take your time and make sure that adequate lighting is available, but smartphone cameras are supposed to be used to capture a moment and this one is not ideally placed to do this. The video recording is a big let down though and I struggled to take anything worth publishing. Add to this the fact that the camera app takes an age to get going and the moments will be long gone before you get the chance to snap anything.

Battery

I expected little here, but managed two full days before I needed to charge it. Even though it is rated at only 1300 mAh it only has to deal with the slower processor so this appears to be a good match. Heavy use will see the power drop much quicker, but you should always be able to get through a day with it which seems to be an acceptable benchmark these days for most people.

Conclusion

I look at the price and feel that there is a lot on offer here which makes it a worthy option, but then I consider how it works and have second thoughts. It is trying to be a grown up smartphone, but doesn’t have the innards to be so. It is stuck next to feature phones which can handle media, photography and some other crucial aspects (to the target market) better and this leaves me confused by the Wildfire. Offering a smartphone running the latest version of Android makes a lot of sense, but if the buyer then struggles to use it this does not make any sense long term.

I like the Wildfire, I really do, in the same way I liked the HTC Tattoo. It looks like a baby Desire and is a great ‘phone’, but those who want the full smartphone experience will need to buy a more expensive smartphone. In the case of the Wildfire you get what you pay for which is a good budget smartphone that will suit those who want to move up from the feature phone world without paying a fortune.