Review:: HTC Wildfire

One of my buds Barry got himself a new Android equipped Cellphone. Believe me it was a hassle from choosing out of all the models that are available out there. It's confusing when you take a look at list of items to consider like the budget, features, specifications, looks and over all the reliability of the model too. There are too many choices available out there, that it's enough to make a sane person mad.

I took a look at the HTC Wildfire courtesy my buddy Barry. The phone in question is displayed below:

There are some considerations when you look at a phone in an emerging market like India. First and foremost is the fact that there are a lot of players here who cater to budgets of all ranges. So basically buying a phone is now a bit like buying a new home, there are a lot of issues to consider like, the price (is it affordable?), the looks (does it pop eyes?), the features (is it NexGen ready?). Whew!! With the 3G services rolling out across pan-India, we are going to be in the middle of a big cellular devices wars between all the manufacturers, with all of them offering some or the other eye catching opportunity. So there is no surprise really that there is an influx of new models of phones hitting the markets regularly from top vendors like HTC, Samsung, Nokia.

So how does the HTC Wildfire fare in the current condrum?

Well here's the answer.

Android phones are the next big thing in India, everybody and their mother wants a phone running on Android and the vendors are only happy to provide. HTC Wildfire is HTC Android based device, running Android 2.1 (upgradeable to Android 2.2). 

So the review - Lets rate it....

• Design & Looks: Compact is the word that comes to mind when you hold the HTC Wildfire in your hand for the first time. The device is elegant with the right sized curves, fairly thing and with the right chassis. The device almost does not weight when put in front pocket.
• My Rating: 3.5/5
• Screen & Resolution: The HTC Wildfire has a 3.2" capacitive screen with QVGA (320 X 240) pixel resolution. Compared to the high end phones, the display does come wanting as the there is a noticeable dullness.
• My Rating: 2.5/5
• User Inferface: The Wildfire runs on Android 2.1 in the back with HTC UI Sense running in the front. It has 7 UI screens that the users get to customize and due the resolution, my guess is you will need all 7 to get work done on it. The mobile does support, side by side swipe gestures and the pinch, but they get a little time to get used to. The alternative is using the home button on the mobile. The interface does look fresh with nice color which strike a good appeal.
• My Rating: 4/5
• Performance: My this is one of my flies in the soup. While trying to keep the cost down HTC has compromised on the processing speed and it shows when you try to put the phone through it's paces. The performance lags just a bit and this will particularly be seen if you are an app-junkie who just has to have all the apps in the market. The 528 MHz ARM 11 processor tries valiantly to keep up, but in my opinion a 1 GHz processor will have made this model into a great product.
• My Rating: 3/5
• Price: The HTC Wildfire will pinch your pocket to the tune of Rs. 14500/- approx. All in all I believe it to be a fair value for the money being shelled. If you want to get on the Android Bandwagaon, tote a phone that has 3G features, a fair list of apps, looks cool and doesn't pinch your wallet much then the HTC Wildfire may just be piece for you.

Finally the verdict: Overall Rating 3.25. Though it does not seems to be able to compete with models like Galaxy 3, it does a fair amount on it's own on a modest budget. So my view, if you want an android phone bad with decent performance and looks, then the HTC Wildfire is a good buy in a decent budget.

Full phone specifications (courtesy gsmarena)
  

General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 2100
	Announced	2010, May
	Status	Available. Released 2010, May
Size	Dimensions	106.8 x 60.4 x 12 mm
	Weight	118 g
Display	Type	TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	240 x 320 pixels, 3.2 inches
		- Multi-touch input method
		- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
		- Touch-sensitive controls
		- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
		- Optical trackpad
		- HTC Sense UI
		- Turn-to-mute and lift-to-dim-out a call
Sound	Alert types	Vibration, MP3
	Speakerphone	Yes
		- 3.5 mm audio jack
Memory	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Practically unlimited
	Internal	384 MB RAM; 512 MB ROM
	Card slot	microSD, up to 32GB, buy memory
Data	GPRS	Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
	EDGE	Class 10, 236.8 kbps
	3G	HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
	Bluetooth	Yes v2.1 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0
Camera	Primary	5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Geo-tagging
	Video	Yes
	Secondary	No
Features	OS	Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair), upgradable to v2.2
	CPU	528 MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7225 chipset
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
	Games	Yes
	Colors	Black, Brown, White, Red, Silver
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
	Java	Via third party application
		- Digital compass
		- Dedicated search key
		- Facebook, Flickr, Twitter integration
		- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
		- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration
		- MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA9 player
		- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV9 player
		- Voice memo
		- Predictive text input
Battery		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1300 mAh
	Stand-by	Up to 480 h (2G) / Up to 690 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 7 h 20 min (2G) / Up to 8 h 10 min (3G)