My First Android Experience . Review on HTC Wildfire

I had been waiting long to acquire an android phone in India around 10k and wanted to upgrade my Nokia e62 after waiting for long and only a few android options I acquired Nokia E63 which is a good phone in its own right but not discussed here.

Recently I got a promotion and one of the perquisite was the ability to acquire mobile at company’scost, so increased my budget to 15k ( although I think 10k is the max you should pay for a phone because unlike otherelectronics , mobile tend to have only life of 1-2 years). At 15k , they were not many android options . Samsung had i5700 and i7500 but both were not available, Sony ericssion had Xperia Mini which I thought was incredible stupid deal as it had a very small screenso all fun of touch screen like browsing etc was lost and it had android 1.6.HTC had two android phones around 15k HTC Tatoo and Wildfire , Tatoo has earlier version of android, lower battery capacity and lesser camera so I went for Wildfire.

HTC wildfire is one of the budget smart phones of HTC, so the package box is very small with only the essentials ( Battery, charger/USB cable, headphones, 2gb card, no leather pouch/carrying case) .

Initial use – When I first started the phone, the phone requested for a few details including my gmail account. Contacts and email from my gmail accounts were automatically downloaded to my phone. (the setup is very simple). The phone automatically detected my city and weather details are shown in the home screen

OS – HTC wildfire has Android 2.1 ( Éclair) with a layer of HTC sense on top of it , HTC sense add few benefits , but delays rolling out of new firmware like Android 2.2 etc.

The overall look and feel of Android 2.1 is brilliant , except for iphone I don’t think any platform even come close to Android 2.1, the interface is very intuitive , the capacitive touch screen is again brilliant. Nokia phones with Symbian are not even in the same ball park.

The only sad thing about the interface is that uses QVGA screen with average resolution, which was to keep the cost low , the screen quality doesnot match HTC high end phones or Samsung’s Amoled display

Applications / Android Phones – again except for iphone, android has the second largest collection of apps , you will find good application for instant messaging, social networking email, news etc. to give one example I never found a good ebook reader for my nokia e63 and I have downloaded more than 3 good ones from androidmarket. Another example is a guitar app which allows you to play guitar usingthe touchscreen which my 2 year daughter really likes to play

Social Networking – the HTC phone has applications for facebook, twitter . Since I am not much into social networking I have not used them.The android market has a google app for orkut which is good and used by meregularly.

Camera

Wildfire has a 5 mp camera , the quality of pics is good butnot great. Photos tend to be better without the flash.

Video recording is very poor with only 15fps and no HD etc.

Maps/GPS

Wildfire uses A-GPS( i.e GPS along with network triangulation) the inbuilt Google app is easy to use and accurate , the application also youto find nearby restaurant, filling station etc using your actual position

Battery

Wildfire has 1300 Mh which is good but not ideal, the phone with reasonable use will last you a day , the user needs to be careful withapplications running in background and battery hoggers like wifi and GPS.

Wireless

The phone has wifi as well as 3G , the android controls the wireless experience , for example if you switch on WIfi , all the applicationsautomatically use wifi and the moment you go out of range , mobile internet is activated.

Music Player

The inbuilt music player and headphones are good , but in case you want to store lot of songs , you will have to buy a higher capacity SD card

Durability

the phone looks fragile and needs to be handled with care , do not treat as a nokia phone. The phone has fallen couple of times and small chunks of paint have come out

Email

The email sync automatically with gmail , other email can be added . the email experience is not in the league of nokia E series or Blackberry

Pros

Andoid 2.1

HTC Sense

Very good Capacitive touch screen

Android applications

Google applications including Gmail and Maps

Cons

Battery life is average

QVGA screen

Not ideal to replace business phones like Nokia E series /Blackberry