HTC Wildfire Review: A bit of Android for everybody

The Wildfire is one of the latest Android-based offerings to hit the consumer market from Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, and for many people who do not have the cash to throw around and get a premium phone like an iPhone or HTC Desire, the HTC Wildfire could be a fantastic option.

Design-wise the Wildfire is compact and curvy with dimensions measuring 12.19mm x 60.4mm x 106.75mm making it quite the eye candy. Basically it looks like a pint-sized version of the HTC Desire, even sporting the metallic housing, which has to be said is a great thing. The Wildfire also comes with Wi-Fi and GPS included, along with a 3.5mm headphone slot as standard.

At 118g (including the battery), the Wildfire is very lightweight. Even though it is small, it does feel solid in the palm of the hand and most importantly does in no way feel cheap (like the Tattoo did). At start up the Wilfire will run you through its initial set up, including letting you sync contacts and set up Wifi, and takes far quicker than the HTC Hero did to boot up initially.

Sporting a 528MHz processor the Wildfire is not the most powerful handset on the market, with its bigger brother the Desire kicking it to the curb. We found the processor however to be adequate –if a bit slow at times– especially when multi tasking between contacts and other applications.

The 3.2in QVGA touch-screen is fully capacitive, responding to gestures fantastically, and operates at a resolution 240 x 320 resolution (which to be fair is adequate for the price of this phone, all other features are ones usually found in higher end mobiles).

The HTC Wildfire has four touch sensitive buttons below the screen which are home, menu, back and search – to aid quick navigation. An optical track pad is also included for those who do not want to prod the touchscreen, but it is a bit unresponsive at times (but to be honest who is going to be using the thing anyway?). The actual UI on the Wildfire is highly slick, offering users Android 2.1 with HTC Sense slapped on which maks it gorgeous to use.

The Wildfire comes pre-loaded with a range of apps, including FM Radio, Footprints, Friend Stream, Peep, and the usual suspects such as Stocks and YouTube. Friend Stream is particularly useful for those who like to keep track of their social network accounts, as it is able to sync Facebook, Twitter and Flickr (one of the perks of Android).

The Wildfire sports a rather good 5-megapixel camera with LED flash. Pictures are crisp even when zooming closely into images and the phone takes decent pictures, even in unsteady hands. The phone is unable to record in HD though, but this isn’t a deal-breaker for many smartphone buyers – and again considering the price of this handset you can’t really expect a feature like that.

Overall the HTC Wildfire is a product thrown in to the midst of bigger toys, it is however also a product which holds its own and comes out shining. Highly similar to the HTC Hero in some respects for specs (although this has a far better camera) the Wildfire is a top option for anybody wanting a smartphone that doesn’t cost a weeks wage. To conclude TB thinks that this could be the very first mobile that brings a bit of Android for everybody.