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 Php17,500USD 298INR 25,281EUR 284CNY 2,172 but our reseller contact is offering it for just Php15,500USD 264INR 22,391EUR 252CNY 1,924. See complete specs of HTC Wildfire here.