HTC Wildfire Three Weeks Later: A Phone I Want To Love But Can’t

Three weeks ago I was shipped a HTC Wildfire by HTC: this wasn’t a usual review phone setup as I’d actually won the phone at a HTC event so it was mine to keep. Never wanting to undervalue a new toy, I’ve used the phone now non-stop since receiving it…until today.

In case you missed our previous coverage, the HTC Wildfire: Unboxing And Review post here.

I wrote initially that while it’s a cute little phone that will appeal to the cheap end of the market, the one thing that struck me was the screen resolution, and that hasn’t changed three weeks later.

I hate the screen…passionately, and it’s the reason I’m glad today to have swapped my Sim card out of it and back into my newly rooted and updated to Froyo HTC Desire.

The screen (which is an old fashioned LCD) will be the one and main reason the HTC Wildfire may fail. I say may fail because I’m not convinced there’s not a market for this phone, but I’m not it.

The 3.2″ size does offer some drawbacks, but you can live with that, but the screen resolution is another matter: apps look fuzzy, taking pictures is pot luck, and I only tried shooting video on the phone once: sure, the pics turn out ok but it’s luck when you can’t get a clear crisp picture on the screen of what you’re trying to take a picture of.

The HTC Desire is also somewhat underpowered: if you’ve never had a decent Android phone before, you won’t notice it (and really there’s no great difference between either the iPhone 3 or 3GS) but compared to the HTC Desire the phone is sluggish. Since switching back to the Desire today (running Froyo which in itself runs quicker that 2.1) the slowness also extends not only to opening apps, but how they run, for example waiting for the venue list to load in Foursquare.

There are positives about the phone, and some I’ll miss: I still love the size of the thing, and on landscape view its surprising easy and pleasant to use when typing (indeed the smallness works in its favor,) and having the poorer screen means it definitely held a charge significantly longer than the HTC Desire.

But that aside I can’t in all honesty recommend this phone to anyone who is a heavy user of applications (outside basic social networking) and regular picture taking.

As mentioned, the jury on whether this phone will sell or not is still out, and I’ve noticed it being heavily promoted at Telstra T-Life stores. It’s a perfect phone for non-geek teenage girls….but that’s about it ?