HTC Wildfire First Impressions

We headed off to the office of HTC’s Philippine Distributor yesterday to get a first hand preview of the HTC WildFire and after some time with the handset, let me share with you my first hand impressions.

We were actually shown two units — an engineering unit of the grey-colored Wildfire with a trackball and the final black-colored unit with the trackpad. We were able to play around the engineering unit since it was on and running Android 2.1 while the retail unit was still in its pristine un-touched condition.

The Wildfire looks a bit like the Nexus One crossed with the Desire with the combo of the touch panel and the trackpad. Had that trackball on the engineering unit pushed thru, it might as well have been called the Nexus One Mini.
It has a small or rather shorter form factor but has the same built as the HTC Desire.
The specs were enough to run Android 2.1 and the handset feels snappy and surprisingly responsive. HTC Sense UI worked its charm with the 5 Home Screens.
There was a noticeable difference with the TFT capacitive screen — the grainy-ness was evident and you can clearly see the pixels (sort of) flicker upon closer inspection. Once you get used to the HTC Desire and Legend, you will really miss the AMOLED when you go for the Wildfire.

In our rush to get to the office, I forgot to bring my dSLR and the Ixus 300 HS that I had with me was missing an SD card. We had to settle with the Galaxy S taking these photos and video clips and despite the low light I think it still performed well.

In the video — the HTC Wildfire (retail, off screen) and the Wildfire engineering unit.

According to HTC representatives, the HTC Wildfire will have a suggested retail price of Php17,500 but our reseller contact is offering it for just Php15,500. See complete specs of HTC Wildfire here.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

22 Comments

jackie says:

13 years ago

hi sir ask q lang kung magkakaroon pa ba ng update ang wildfire?
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Ryan Bautista says:

14 years ago

The resolution is fine and at far to samsung star.
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sam says:

14 years ago

Help please..I wanna buy htc wildfire but the reviews about
the resolution makes me think twice..I just want to know how
bad it is..is the resolution the same as the samsung star? It
has a really bad resolution..
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Ryan Bautista says:

14 years ago

Got mine, one of the best cp i ever had since this is the first time of mine using an htc phone. Magnificent touch, much better with an iphone 3g! a must buy and highly recommended to everyone..
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Hater says:

14 years ago

The price is not bad for an HTC phone..
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JC says:

14 years ago

I just got mine, i must say, this is really GOOD! However, i’m just wondering how can i double the battery life? there is no initial charging set in the manual..
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roiji says:

14 years ago

oops.. ala palang live wallpapers to.. sayang.. :D
http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/HTC-Wildfire-Review-review-r_2496-p_2.html
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Rod Schneider says:

14 years ago

Will definitely get me one!
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Ton says:

14 years ago

What im taking from this is how useful the galaxy s is :)
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emben says:

14 years ago

nice one… sir Abe could you help me decide which android phone should i buy. the glxy spica i5700 or wildfire??
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roiji says:

14 years ago

@John Ray
yes, but hey, at least it’s not boring when you look at it.. i often just sweep the home screen of my spica just to see that something is moving on my screen LOL! (too busy to root yet so i don’t have live wallpapers yet)

I’m looking to buy the Wildfire for my mom for her birthday :) It’s a cool phone replacement instead of a spica. She loves multi-touch. Spica doesn’t support it :'(
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John Ray Cabrera says:

14 years ago

@abe: how do you compare the screen with the Desire. Wildfire has TFT LCD while Desire has AMOLED. have you tried typing on it? like sending sms? does the onscreen keyboard size matter?

@roiji: while live wallpaper is a cool thing, it may eat up a lot of battery power.
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Miguel says:

14 years ago

Can’t compare Bada to Android – it doesn’t let downloaded apps multitask and based on some reviews, has some bugs in the builtin apps. Bada is really a high-end Featurephone OS.
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ook says:

14 years ago

Sir Yuga,

I’m thinking of getting a Samsung Wave or an HTC Wildfire. Which one should I pick?

For a couple of thousand pesos, the Samsung Wave has a much better screen but my concern is the number of apps for Bada.

With wildfire, everything is almost good expect for the very low-resolution screen.

Please help. Thanks! :D
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Liz says:

14 years ago

I posted a comment here: http://www.yugatech.com/blog/daily-dose/surviving-a-libel-case/

and realized it was year 2007. :) I’m curious about your case coz I’m facing such situation. Thanks!
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Whatif says:

14 years ago

wildfire vs x10 mini/pro :)
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roiji says:

14 years ago

oooohhhh…. live wallpapers… :D
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Roca says:

14 years ago

any specs?

processor?
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