HTC Wildfire: Budget Android Phone

The good thing about yuletide season is not the filled, hung stocking on the chimney wall. It is what you fill into those stockings. Can't quite get the metaphor? It's your capacity to buy gadgets like there's no tomorrow, thanks to a myriad of company bonus and 13th month and 14th month and what-have-you.

Let me introduce to you the latest addition to HTC phone lineage, the HTC Wildfire. This budget device is touted to be a crossbred between two equally powerful, Android-clad devices, HTC Desire and the Google's Nexus One. I say it's a budget device because without the Samsung Galaxy 5, it could have been the cheapest among its breed.

Similarly Android powered as its distant cousin HTC Desire, under its hood are premium specs: 528Mhz Qualcomm MSM 7225 processor, 3.2inch capacitive display, 384MB of RAM, and a 5megapixel camera. For its price point, one would only expects 2.8inch resistive display, 256MB RAM, and a 3.2MP camera. So you get your money's worth on the specs alone, being only tagged as Php13,990.

It has plethora of software a road warrior could ask for, including Android 2.1 Eclair(which can be upgraded to Froyo 2.2 if available), Leap which is neat for switching homescreens, FriendStream widget for checking out your friends, intuitive highlighting tool similar to iPhone, built-in Flash lite, and a Keyboard that which is probably one of the best virtual keyboards in the market. It also has Live Wallpapers that I find cool to pride when having Android OS. :)

One caveat though, aside form the fact that it isn't AMOLED, is that some apps from the Android market may not run properly because of its low resc screen, so future Android users might want to consider having at least 480x320 resc.

I am not really enamored at the sable brown finish because it looks so D.O.M.-ish, so a white variant is astutely fine for me. Trendy and modern, it's an immaculate white with a metallic silver band slicing the monotony at the back cover, just like the HTC HD2.

My verdict? HTC Wildfire may not punch a power wallop in comparative degree to HTC Desire, but it does deliver its job fairly well at its price point.