By Ready for another HTC handset yet? This time we are talking about the HTC Wildfire, the latest to be unveiled. The Wildfire is a pretty typical mid-range offering, with quadband GSM and 900/2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA radios. You’ll be getting the (thankfully) now standard Android 2.1 (though you won’t be so thankful when 2.2 is already out), and a bevy of other goodies under the hood.
The dirty on specs:
- 525MHz Qualcomm MSM 7225 CPU
- 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash
- 802.11 b/g
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- 512 MB flash memory
- 384 MB RAM
- expandable microSD storage
The Wildfire comes in as a replacement for the not-so-hot HTC Tattoo, aiming to snatch up some young first-time smartphone buyers when it drops in Europe during Q3 of this year.
Full Press Release:
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE WITH HTC WILDFIRETM
Share apps, updates and experiences with the latest social powerhouse from HTC
LONDON – 18 May, 2010, 07.00 CEST – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced HTC Wildfire™, a new HTC Sense-based Android phone that integrates the most popular social networks to help bring your friends closer to you. HTC Wildfire closely follows the success of the acclaimed HTC Desire and makes the company’s signature HTC Sense experience accessible to a younger audience.
“Today’s social networks provide an essential forum for friendship with more than 400 million users* – many of whom are young adults – actively sharing their lives with their friends through Facebook,” said Florian Seiche, Vice President, HTC EMEA. “HTC Wildfire makes the HTC Sense experience available to young mobile users for the first time. It brings all your communications into one place, whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, images or email, ensuring that you are never far away from the conversation and always close to your friends.”
HTC Wildfire helps you stay connected with those who are most important to you through HTC Sense, a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. You won’t miss out on the fun as HTC’s Friend Stream application seamlessly gathers and displays content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised stream of updates. HTC Wildfire enables you to stay up to date with your friends’ posts, comments, alerts and photos, wherever you are.
In addition, each contact viewed in HTC Wildfire’s address book includes a thread of recent communications with that person, including when you last spoke, recent text messages and emails, and social network updates. When your friend calls, HTC Caller ID displays their Facebook profile photo and latest update, as well as a reminder if their birthday is fast approaching.
Thanks to a new app sharing widget, HTC Wildfire enables you to recommend an application by email, text message or over social networks. Your friends will receive a link allowing them to find the application on the Android Market with a single click and download it to their phone.
Florian Seiche continued, “We understand that people need a better way to navigate their way through the tens of thousands of applications that are currently available on the Android Market. In fact, our own independent research found that consumers are not only hungry for the latest and most popular applications that their friends are using, they want an easier way to find and download them. For the first time ever, you can recommend the newest and coolest apps to a friend or group of friends with HTC Wildfire. With so many applications to choose from, there’s a world of content to discover and pass along to your friends.”
HTC’s latest advanced smartphone is great for viewing and sharing photos on Flickr and for surfing the internet thanks to its 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen. A five-megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash allows you to capture special moments, while a 3.5mm audio jack and micro SD card slot mean you are never without your favourite songs.
Availability
The new HTC Wildfire will be broadly available to customers across major European and Asian markets from Q3 2010.Notes
*Source: www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics. More information is available on request.About HTC
HTC Corporation (HTC) is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile phone industry. By putting people at the centre of everything it does, HTC creates innovative smartphones that better serve the lives and needs of individuals. The company is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2498. For more information about HTC, please visit www.htc.com
Why would you ever buy this? 52X MHz processors should be forever banned from the smartphone industry…
@redandblack1287: This phone is being marketed at the lower end of the market and so is perfectly capable for those needs. It is aimed at younger first-time smartphone users, on cheap contracts here in Europe and potentially as a reasonably priced contract-free phone as well.
Normally I would agree with redandblack1287, but I see Steve’s point as well. I still think they could do better than that old 525MHz Qualcomm (there are better non-Snapdragon CPUs available, like the one in the LG Ally), but I must admit, after the Android 2.1 update, my Droid Eris on its weak 528MHz CPU is actually quite peppy. Anyway, I’m guessing this is why they decided not to give the Tattoo a 2.1 update. I must say, though, that the color would definitely give me pause. Give me black, gray, or even silver any day over maroon.
where do they get their inspiration from me wonders?
Whats next HTC One, HTC Pride or Sunday Bloody Sunday?
the buttons really look cheap on this phone there is too much space
Not impressed by the specs or the color.
For those complaining about 528MHz, there is a simple answer.
Overclock the bugger. Got my Hero running at 650 nicely. :)
This is going backwards.. That is bad…
I like it. Not everyone can afford a Nexus / Desire / Evo / the next big thing. I know my younger brother is well jealous of my Milstone but cannot afford it. Surely this is better than him not having Android????
This is a nice looking lower end phone. nothing wrong with that! Nexus One/Incredible looks at a nice price(im guessing that it wont cost too much judging by the specs and the fact it’s a replacement for the tattoo).
Plus im guessing the processor won’t be so bad once 2.2 is out and available for this phone.
Noooo… Please… Don’t kill another phone with old halfgigaherz Qualcomm MSM outdated ARM 6 processor… At least add the same frequency, but more advance architecture… The MSMs are positively the worst processors ever. We know that since they’re out.
Anyway, this Device is a much worse looking and user friendly (sensor buttons – Gime a break…) Legend.
Good business decision, the market needs diversity, while Im looking at a high-end phone ( INC, EVO,etc) my younger sister would go gaga for this, she doesnt need all the bells and whistles and I like this for competition for the KIN. I see what you’re doing HTC
I don’t know what everybody is complaining about. The one thing about Android which makes it great is variety and while there are many great high end phones out there, the entry level smartphone market still needs to be rounded out. I think this phone is beautiful (and the fact that it comes in several colors is awesome).
If this phone is priced around the same as the Blackberry Curve or the Palm Pixi or low end WinMo phones, it should sell well.
Yes but as a low budget phone the selling point will be the price.When you can get the galaxy spica (which is better) for 270 and the vodafone 845 (which is about the same) from about 200 the rumored price of 280 doesnt make it all that appealing
Well for starters in the Android World this phone is pretty good. The design is like a little nexus one,specially in the nexus one color schema, the camera seems big, a lot of light jamming in, the 5 mega pix and the flash (used as a flashlight) makes the rest.better than the mid-end hero cause if the processor is the same, the ram is far better.from the video it handles well, opening apps and is a what 1sec slower than a 1Mhz processor? still the 600Mhz would be better because of the whole arq.but like i said, in a regular basis for startes beats samsung and other from the same price, that have creepy software…or even with android don’t have the Sense 2
why are you people complaining so much about the low resolution and slow processor? this is a low-end phone with different target market and that’s not you guys. we know, that you can afford those high-end phones like iPhone 4, desire, evo, etc… you don’t have to brag. for us in the third world countries, even this low-end phone will cost us a large chunk of our pockets. so, don’t complain too much. just read those high-end phones review. you’re just wasting your precious time reading this.