HTC Wildfire S

The HTC Wildfire arrived in mid-2010, when the world was still reeling from the impact of the sensational HTC Desire.

And the Wildfire was almost as popular, coupling HTC's fantastic Sense user interface with a smaller, solid and capable little body – it was a lot of people's first, affordable smartphone.

If you are in the market for a new smartphone, check out our sneaky video peek at the phone before reading on:

But things are a little different in 2011. The dual-core "superphones" have arrived, which means something with a lowly 600MHz processor is going to have to win fans via features and price rather than power.

The HTC Wildfire S isn't exactly a cheap phone, either. Currently on sale for around £220 through the SIM-free retailers, there are now plenty of extremely capable Android-powered phones out there for less money – such as the Samsung Galaxy Ace or LG Optimus One.

It's going to be a bloody fight, this.

Design

HTC has refreshed the design substantially, giving the Wildfire S the same workmanlike black and chrome look as seen in the excellent HTC Desire S.

There are no physical buttons on the front of the phone, with HTC opting for four capacitive touch-buttons. These are your standard Android Home, Menu, Back and Search options. They're responsive, plus HTC has put in a little vibration feedback to reassure your brain that your finger did indeed just hit the right spot.

HTC has removed the optical trackpad, which has allowed it to make the Widlfire S a little shorter than last year's model. It's a very tiny phone and also manages to be lighter – 105g versus the original's 118g.

The 3.2-inch screen runs at 320x480 resolution, so obviously isn't going to be as sharp as displays found on more expensive phones. But it is pleasingly solid, nice and glassy and responsive to even the lightest of touches.

Given that the old HTC Wildfire had a screen outputting at a shameful 240x320, this is still a big step up. It's not particularly sharp, mind – there's a noticeable mesh over everything if you look closely.

Feel

Round the back is your classic HTC moulded rubber cover, which is grippy and feels pretty solid. There's also the 5MP camera lens and, thankfully, an LED flash.

There's a proximity sensor in the front case, allowing the Wildfire S to dim the screen when you press it to your ear. But there's no front-facing camera here.

It's a chunky, well-made little phone that feels very nice in the hand and impressively solid. But is it any good when you turn it on?

You get Android 2.3 on the Wildfire S, with HTC's latest version of its Sense UI over the top. We like a bit of HTC Sense – it's a very comprehensive re-skin, and one that adds huge amounts of extra functionality to Google's popular mobile OS.

The lock screen is in the standard HTC style – swipe down to access the Home screens. Once there you have a choice of seven workspaces to flip through, each holding a selection of app shortcuts, widgets and folders.

The standard pull-down Android Notifications window has been upgraded by HTC, now coming with a scrolling list of recently opened apps, plus a quick settings tab for toggling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and more on or off.

The Wildfire S does a pretty good job of keeping everything running smoothly. Some of the more complex apps, such as social network aggregator Friend Stream, can slow the scrolling down a little, but it's generally a solid experience.

Friend Stream lets you pull in status updates from Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, presenting everything in one unified timeline. You can scroll up and down within this app, so it's all there right in front of you on a Home screen.

It can get a little messy, though. Web links in status updates very kindly open up the website in question, only your view of the page is restricted by having the original tweet at the top and a retweet bar at the bottom – leaving only a minuscule gap for the actual web content between.

While HTC's widgets offer great functionality, their white-on-black style is beginning to look a little dated.

HTC has also provided Home screen widgets that create an icon-based list of Contacts you've added to your Favourites, a music player, its famous weather widget and one that streams in your latest text messages. It's all very user-friendly, and no doubt geared towards those who don't do a lot of tinkering.

If you do like playing about, HTC's Sense interface has a lot beneath the bonnet. Home screens can be shuffled about, with a two-fingered pinch of the screen bringing up an overview of your workspace and long-pressing on a screen icon enabling you to change the order in which it appears.

Enthusiasts will also enjoy HTC's many customisation options. The right-hand button on the curved dock brings up the Personalisation menu, from where users can change scene – a way to create and save Home screen setups – or select entire new skins for the phone's screens and menus.

It's not just visual enhancements, either. Collections of Sound sets can be downloaded via this menu and the HTC Hub it links to, if you need a new collection of tones and alarms.

Back in the apps menu, HTC has again given us more options than are usually found in Android devices. Apps can be sorted alphabetically or by date, plus there are separate tabs for frequently used tools and those you've downloaded yourself.

One of the many tiny changes made to this latest version of HTC Sense is the scrolling of the app listing. It now flips down one whole screen at a time, so it's easy to keep your place if you have a heap of things loaded onto the phone.

Android 2.3 is a great, polished operating system. HTC Sense makes it a little better.

Full Spesification's For HTC Wildfire S

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 2100
		HSDPA 850 / 1900 or HSDPA 2100 (Australia)
	SIM	Mini-SIM
	Announced	2011, February
	Status	Available. Released 2011, May

BODY	Dimensions	101.3 x 59.4 x 12.4 mm (3.99 x 2.34 x 0.49 in)
	Weight	105 g (3.70 oz)

DISPLAY	Type	TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
	Size	320 x 480 pixels, 3.2 inches (~180 ppi pixel density)
		- HTC Sense 2.1 UI

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 32 GB, 2 GB included
	Internal	512 MB ROM, 512 MB RAM (418 MB user available)

DATA	GPRS	Up to 114 kbps
	EDGE	Up to 560 kbps
	Speed	HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 384 Kbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v3.0 with A2DP, EDR
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
	Features	Geo-tagging, face detection
	Video	Yes, VGA@24fps
	Secondary	No

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), upgradable to v2.3.5 (Gingerbread)
	Chipset	Qulacomm MSM7227
	CPU	600 MHz ARM 11
	GPU	Adreno 200
	Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity, compass
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black, Silver, Brown, Lilac
		- SNS integration - Google Search, Maps, Gmail - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa - MP3/AAC+/WAV player - Xvid/MP4/H.264 player - Organizer - Voice memo - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Li-Ion 1230 mAh battery
	Stand-by	Up to 360 h (2G) / Up to 570 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 7 h 10 min (2G) / Up to 5 h 50 min (3G)

MISC	SAR US	0.90 W/kg (head)     1.21 W/kg (body)
	Price group

TESTS	Display	Contrast ratio: 414:1 (nominal)
	Loudspeaker	Voice 73dB / Noise 66dB / Ring 69dB
	Audio quality	Noise -81.3dB / Crosstalk -81.3B
	Camera	Photo