My Phone: HTC Wildfire

• 3.2-Inches Capacitive Touchscreen
• 528 MHZ Qualcomm MSM 7225 Processor
• 384MB RAM, 512MB ROM
• MicroSD Card Support
• Android 2.1 (upgradable to 2.2)
• HTC Sense UI, Optical Trackpad
• 5 MP Camera with LED Flash
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• GPS & A-GPS Support
• HD Video Recording
• FM Radio and 3.5 mm Headphone Jack
• 1300 mAh Li-ion Battery (Long Battery Life)

This is a review on my phone, the HTC Wildfire bought on November 2010. This is my first ever Android phone so I'm still in the process of learning to operate one efficiently.

Of course once the Android OS is loaded in your ROM would be reduced to about 175 MB with a RAM of about 314 MB availability for your installation of other software applications from the Android market and data.

Giving this HTC Wildfire a spin, generally this is pretty well design despite the lower hardware spec. I suppose they have to in order to keep the lower budgeting.

Design

The phone is nice and compact. 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.

The rather more cramped Home screens of the HTC Wildfire, when compared to the iPhone, began to grate after a little while, and those with larger fingers may struggle to make the appropriate selections.

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. Personally, I'm kind of on the fence in terms of build quality, not that great and not too shabby.

Available in a variety of colours – from jolly cerise to serious bronze – the HTC Wildfire looks grown-up and feels solid in the hand despite its lightweight disposition.

The optical trackpad below the screen is amazing and works very well I must say. The optical trackpad doubles as the front panel's only button; other commands are controlled by touchpads at the bottom of the touchscreen panel.

Unfortunately, HTC has not seen fit to give the Wildfire the camera button, so the optical trackpad doubles as shooter too.

The handset does have the one-button volume control on one side though, and the HTC Wildfire's power/screen-lock button sits on the top of the handset alongside the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Screen

Screens are all important in this era of technology and it is 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 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.

Performance

The Wildfire's been given the same HTC Sense UI blessing as its other 2.1 siblings -- highlights include Leap for switching between homescreens, FriendStream widget for stalking your friends, an intuitive text highlighting tool (which is dangerously similar to the iOS's), built-in Flash Lite, and a keyboard that many have shown preference to over the stock version.

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.

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.

Since I don't have package for 3G connection I cannot test it but according to my other friends who have the same phone as mine said that they managed to get at least 12 hours of battery life with 3G switched on, while enjoying the occasional music, photo-snapping, video recording, Twitter, FriendStream, and web browsing.

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.

Well, just like any other HTC device, don't expect mind-blowing picture quality -- especially in low-light condition -- from the Wildfire's five-megapixel camera, but indoor shots like the one above look pretty good. As for outdoor usage, the still camera either struggled with the white balance or consistently under-exposed the shots. Still, they are nowhere as bad as the videos recorded -- they're capped at a 352 x 288 resolution with a sad frame rate, and you'll get an even lower frame rate if you record in the dark. What a bummer.

To summarise the entire review:

The Good:

- Stylish

- Battery life is incredible

- Reasonably priced

The Bad:

- Weak video playback

- Video recording is terrible

- Low-resolution screen