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HTC Wildfire S: In the wild first impressions

We grabbed a  brief hands-on with HTC’s Wildfire S back in February at Mobile World Congress, and it’s good to get a better feel for the handset, minus the hordes of people and heavy security tagging.

First impression; we’re impressed by the upgrades HTC had made to the mid-range Wildfire original.

Although we loved how much got packed into the first HTC Wildfire, our main complaint was its grainy screen. Happily this is no problem now; with a resolution upgrade to 320×480.

The Wildfire S may not have a retina dispaly or AMOLED screen, but it’s looking as bright and as sharp as other (presumably pricier) HTC phones.

Vodafone let us have a good play with the phone- they will have this exclusive silver finish alongside another purple metallic model.

The Wildfire S feels satisfyingly solid. Though it won’t win awards for skinniest smartphone, the smoothed profile means it slips in and out of your pocket easily enough.

We’ve checked, and yes, the Wildfire S will be running Gingerbread Android, with all the best Google features and all those Android apps ready to download. Click on for more pictures.

The top of the phone has the screen-lock button and head-phone socket.

The standard four Android buttons light up along the base of the screen, like the rest of HTC’s Android brethren. There’s home, menu, back and search.

Note that the Wildfire’s optical tracker has now disappeared- which is a bit of a shame, but adds to that smoother profile.

Volume rocker, and microUSB port. Moving on!

Compared to the iPhone 4, the petite Wildfire S is quite a bit shorter, and we think more pocket friendly.

Though it is a fair bit thicker…

Five-megapixel camera with LED flash. Check. No word on video just yet, but if the WIldfire S is going to be cheaper than the Desire S, or Incredible S, we expect some features may have been side-lined.

And here’s the camera in action. We’re certainly looking forward to reviewing the Wildfire S in the next few weeks- it looks like it may another greater introductory Android phone from HTC.

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