Okay, so this is the first in a series of tech reviews. First up is my old mobile phone, the HTC Wildfire. I will begin by mentioning this is the original model, not the Wildfire s, which is slightly different on screen size and processor speed (but barely). Throughout this article I will give reasons as to why these features affected me buying and subsequently replacing this phone. Lets start with the screen, the phone has a 3.2inch, 240 x 320 pixel, capacitive touchscreen. In all honesty, by most android phone standards these days that's very small, and i realise that now. At the time of buying this device I thought it would be fine, nice small screen giving me a small phone that would easily fit inside my pocket. This was true but small screen and small phone has negative effects. For starters, it was only on android version 2.2, which I do not think has much app support and live wallpapers are a definite no, and i like them. It will appear throughout this review that I think this phone is awful. That is not entirely true but when compared with others, this just isn't for me so it becomes easier for me to say bad things about it.
It seems common to me that virtually all of the well powered android phones on the market are much larger, easier to see and are faster. The Wildfire only features a rather poor 528MHz processor. At the time of purchase I was totally unaware about how crucial this would be. My thought was that I would not be doing much social networking so speed would not have been an issue. This was true at first as I am not a huge Facebook fan and did hardly use it. I then created myself a twitter account (@lew_carney) and problems started cropping up. I do not believe twitter uses much power as it is simple the odd refreshment of tweets, this did not go so well via wifi or mobile network. I do not blame my network as both features work fine on my new phone but i'll save those comments for another review. Another major problem was the total inability to load youtube videos well, i'll admit this was annoying at first but after a few months things started to pick up and i'm not at all sure why. Anyway, back to the point of processor speed. It becomes a MAJOR problem when trying to turn the phone on. I noticed no real problems at first but once you start to download apps that are often useful and sometimes necessary, a phone like this suffers. I had reached a point whereby I was simply unable to turn off the phone. Not because it wasn't turning off but because it would take just too long to turn back on. I'm only estimating here but I would say the average startup time for me was around 5-6 minutes. Its just not on! I would also not recommend using ANY games on the phone as it simply cannot support the majority of them.
I'm not the kind of person who enjoys taking thousands of pictures, all on his mobile phone. In fact, i'm really not bothered at all because that's what cameras are for. I have no real knowledge about how great cameras are, but i do know when some pictures just turn out better. I personally have no real problems with the Wildfire's 5MP camera. I have no idea what make the lens is or if it just something HTC themselves have stuck on, but it seems okay, I noticed no real effects to the images, they were more than satisfactory for someone like me, who only takes the odd photo. Not a great deal of detail, but its hardly visible on such a small screen anyway, I would normally view my pictures on a larger screen, for instance on a computer or connected to a television. I'm afraid i have never tried this and have now cleared the phone as I have given it someone else. I only actually recorded about 2 or 3 videos on the phone in the year and 3 months of me owning it, and they too weren't that bad. Decent quality, again, for someone like me. My only real issue with the videos is that the microphone did not pick up sounds as well as most others can. Plus, the lack of a front facing camera means you wouldn't be able to have a video call on Skype,although the phone could not run this app anyway. I attempted to contact people and all my called just came out with horrible background noise and everything was inaudible.
Moving on to audio, which is again, something I do not use much on a phone in terms of music playback (I have an old 2nd gen iPod touch for that). Like most phones, this one came with some fairly cheap headphones supplied by the maker, not terrible quality from them though but i did still use my own headphones. When listening to some audio out loud I only really encountered issues in more open areas. In a relatively quiet environment, the sound quality from the phone was decent at a normal level, outdoors, there was less clarity, especially at higher volumes, but I can't really complain because I don't really know people who are constantly listening to music out loud when out of their own houses. In call volume impressed me. I've not had very good phones previously but the conversations with this were very good. People could be heard clearly and they could hear me so I suppose that's all that really matters.
I'm running out of things to say now that I really know anything about remotely so i'll end this soon. To cover battery life will not take long. I care very much about long battery life as I have no desire to be needing to recharge my devices every day. This phone contains a 1300mAh Lithium-ion battery and I have no faults to report. With minimalistic use and constant checking on running apps, I can easily make this phone last 5 days minimum without being recharged, which I would say is very good by today's standards.
That's the end for this particular tech review. I'll pick up on what else I need to be saying as I write more. But I am sick of talking about this phone anyway so this is just coming to an abrupt end. Overall, I would not say I would discourage people form buying this phone as it is cheap and very easy to use. Ideal for someone who has never used an android phone before but it is not representative of the whole platform.
It seems common to me that virtually all of the well powered android phones on the market are much larger, easier to see and are faster. The Wildfire only features a rather poor 528MHz processor. At the time of purchase I was totally unaware about how crucial this would be. My thought was that I would not be doing much social networking so speed would not have been an issue. This was true at first as I am not a huge Facebook fan and did hardly use it. I then created myself a twitter account (@lew_carney) and problems started cropping up. I do not believe twitter uses much power as it is simple the odd refreshment of tweets, this did not go so well via wifi or mobile network. I do not blame my network as both features work fine on my new phone but i'll save those comments for another review. Another major problem was the total inability to load youtube videos well, i'll admit this was annoying at first but after a few months things started to pick up and i'm not at all sure why. Anyway, back to the point of processor speed. It becomes a MAJOR problem when trying to turn the phone on. I noticed no real problems at first but once you start to download apps that are often useful and sometimes necessary, a phone like this suffers. I had reached a point whereby I was simply unable to turn off the phone. Not because it wasn't turning off but because it would take just too long to turn back on. I'm only estimating here but I would say the average startup time for me was around 5-6 minutes. Its just not on! I would also not recommend using ANY games on the phone as it simply cannot support the majority of them.
I'm not the kind of person who enjoys taking thousands of pictures, all on his mobile phone. In fact, i'm really not bothered at all because that's what cameras are for. I have no real knowledge about how great cameras are, but i do know when some pictures just turn out better. I personally have no real problems with the Wildfire's 5MP camera. I have no idea what make the lens is or if it just something HTC themselves have stuck on, but it seems okay, I noticed no real effects to the images, they were more than satisfactory for someone like me, who only takes the odd photo. Not a great deal of detail, but its hardly visible on such a small screen anyway, I would normally view my pictures on a larger screen, for instance on a computer or connected to a television. I'm afraid i have never tried this and have now cleared the phone as I have given it someone else. I only actually recorded about 2 or 3 videos on the phone in the year and 3 months of me owning it, and they too weren't that bad. Decent quality, again, for someone like me. My only real issue with the videos is that the microphone did not pick up sounds as well as most others can. Plus, the lack of a front facing camera means you wouldn't be able to have a video call on Skype,although the phone could not run this app anyway. I attempted to contact people and all my called just came out with horrible background noise and everything was inaudible.
Moving on to audio, which is again, something I do not use much on a phone in terms of music playback (I have an old 2nd gen iPod touch for that). Like most phones, this one came with some fairly cheap headphones supplied by the maker, not terrible quality from them though but i did still use my own headphones. When listening to some audio out loud I only really encountered issues in more open areas. In a relatively quiet environment, the sound quality from the phone was decent at a normal level, outdoors, there was less clarity, especially at higher volumes, but I can't really complain because I don't really know people who are constantly listening to music out loud when out of their own houses. In call volume impressed me. I've not had very good phones previously but the conversations with this were very good. People could be heard clearly and they could hear me so I suppose that's all that really matters.
I'm running out of things to say now that I really know anything about remotely so i'll end this soon. To cover battery life will not take long. I care very much about long battery life as I have no desire to be needing to recharge my devices every day. This phone contains a 1300mAh Lithium-ion battery and I have no faults to report. With minimalistic use and constant checking on running apps, I can easily make this phone last 5 days minimum without being recharged, which I would say is very good by today's standards.
That's the end for this particular tech review. I'll pick up on what else I need to be saying as I write more. But I am sick of talking about this phone anyway so this is just coming to an abrupt end. Overall, I would not say I would discourage people form buying this phone as it is cheap and very easy to use. Ideal for someone who has never used an android phone before but it is not representative of the whole platform.
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