HTC Wildfire or HTC Desire?

[carolien]

I now have a Samsung Omnia 2, but its awfully slow (if I want to open a thread with about 200 text messages in it, it takes me about half a minute to open the inbox and another 2 minutes to open the thread itself..) and I can choose a new phone with my new abbonnement (is that an english word?). I'm having doubts whether to buy the desire or the wildfire. With the wildfire i'd have to take a 1-year abbo, with the desire a 2-year abbo, so the desire will cost a little more. This will be my first android phone. I mostly use my phone for texting, calling and internetting and at times listening to music or using apps/playing games. The thing that irritates me about my samsung is that it's slow. But when I look at the specs, its processor is faster than the wildfire's. Does anyone know whether the wildfire is faster than the samsung omnia 2? Or does anyone know how long it takes with the wildfire to open a thread with about 200 incoming textmessages?

The most important things about a phone for me are that it's fast (don't want to wait 3 minutes before I can read text messages), that it has a lot of memory for text messages (don't want to have to empty my inbox every week because it's full, I'd love to be able to store over 1000 text messages in my inbox), that I don't have to charge the phone every day (my samsung omnia I charge once in 3 or 4 days, would love my new phone to be able to last as long as this one)

What would you recommend? I have two friends both using android phones for a while now, but one of them recommends the wildfire and the other one recommends the desire, so I still don't know what to do

 

[steviecvr]

Well I own a HTC Wildfire, and texting is rather fast, takes about 1-3 seconds (depending) to open a message. I have my settings set to automatically delete threads with more than 20 messages so I can't comment on the space. And before I got the Wildfire people said the battery life was good, but I charged it all last night, took it off at 12pm and it is now 5pm and the battery is yellow and looks about 30%

 

[turfer]

If speed is a big requirement for you then the Desire would be the better option. However, because it has the larger high res screen it tends to be quite sore on the battery ( especially if your going to be using the internet via 3G ).You would probably need to charge it every day/ day and half.

I have the Wildfire and 50 is the most ammount of text messages I have had ( as that's where I have set the phone to start deleteing) and so far speed hasn't been an issue for me. It's a very nice looking, all round relatively capable, value for money smartphone.

steviecvr Have you been using 3G for surfing? That's quite an exhaustive battery drain there. I fully charged my Wildfire last night, till about midnight. It has been on wifi all night, used it today to make a few short calls, replied to several text messages and checked/sent a couple of emails and at 17.30 I still have 95% battery left.

 

[steviecvr]

Well my area doesn't support 3g, but I had it enabled. I used your helpful tip now and hopefully this improves the battery ! I'll let you guys know.

 

[Jenniferr2011]

Well I own a HTC Wildfire, and texting is rather fast, takes about 1-3 seconds (depending) to open a message. I have my settings set to automatically delete threads with more than 20 messages so I can't comment on the space. And before I got the Wildfire people said the battery life was good, but I charged it all last night, took it off at 12pm and it is now 5pm and the battery is yellow and looks about 30%

addmittedly, Wildfire has a quick resopne for opening the files. But you have to notice the low-resolution of Wildfire. Sometimes the video will freez up when the files with high resolution.

I have no comment about Desire, because I haven't bought it.

 

[partridge]

I have a Desire and a friend has the Wildfire, the most obvious difference is the screen quality and video playback. Otherwise they look pretty identical and at the moment the Wildfire has some HTC apps that aren't available for the Desire (until 2.2 arrives)

The Wildfire will also get Android 2.2 at some point soon though which offers increased performance, faster browsing, etc.

It's a lovely little phone, fits easily in the hand and has the same camera as the Desire which takes perfectly good photos.

It has a slower processor, but unless you think you'll be using apps that are going to be resource hungry, so what? The Wildfire is cheaper too.

 

[Tuckwoor]

I have a desire and the missus has just got a wildfire. Very impressed with it tbh. It seems a lot better on the battery and is a really nice size.

 

[nicmel]

I'm looking at these forums as a Desire owner as I'm researching potential options for my father, but he's on a budget so the Wildfire is likely his better option.

I just thought I'd let you know that on the Desire I have over 1500 texts, and around 7-800 of these are from the same person. when I view the thread (in Handcent) only the most recent 15 or so texts are loaded immediately, others are loaded when I scroll up. Loading time is negligible due to this.

 

[RightSaidJames]

I think the Wildfire is really good... other than a few software flaws/bugs (which I'm sure are shared with the Desire and the Legend) it suits my needs perfectly. However, anyone thinking of buying one should keep in mind what it is and isn't capable of:

• Flash video isn't worth bothering with. Things take ages to load and the framerate is awful. Thankfully there's a YouTube application.
• Standard video formats aren't great either, although I daresay it's possible to convert videos into a more Wildfire-friendly (i.e. low-res) format.
• Don't even think about Live Wallpapers.
• The web browser is well designed (I especially like how text is reshaped to fit the screen when you zoom), but the low resolution means that it's not ideal. If you've ever used the internet on an iPod Touch/iPhone you might be a bit dissapointed. Nonetheless, it's still a lot better than most phone browsers, just not quite up to smartphone standard.
• Battery life isn't great.
• There is the occasional bit of lag, and widgets take a second to refresh when you bring them up on screen.
• Some apps (e.g. Engadget) won't work on the Wildfire because they require a higher res screen.

Other than that, it does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It's excellent for And I expect a fair few of those issues will be fixed with the release of Froyo.

 

[Pedro7]

depends on your budget really. the wildfire is a great phone, but the desire is just a higher spec phone. faster processor, higher res screen, live wallpapers. it will also probably receive 2.2 froyo much sooner than the wildfire (speculating)

the wildfire also falls into a small category for resolution if im right, where the resolution is the same as the htc tattoo. and unfortunately, browsing through the market on a desire and on a wildfire, there are quite a few apps that i've found that dont support the wildfire's res.

i've used both phones and they're very quick, both phones are great smartphones. it just boils down to your budget. if you're happy with spending lower, then i don't think you're going to get a better phone than the wildfire for the price you'll be paying which is excellent.

all in all, they're both great phones, i might suggest trying to play around with both before making a choice?

also, wildfire sounds better than desire to me

 

[Tambudzai]

If speed is a big requirement for you then the Desire would be the better option. However, because it has the larger high res screen it tends to be quite sore on the battery ( especially if your going to be using the internet via 3G ).You would probably need to charge it every day/ day and half.

I have the Wildfire and 50 is the most ammount of text messages I have had ( as that's where I have set the phone to start deleteing) and so far speed hasn't been an issue for me. It's a very nice looking, all round relatively capable, value for money smartphone.

steviecvr Have you been using 3G for surfing? That's quite an exhaustive battery drain there. I fully charged my Wildfire last night, till about midnight. It has been on wifi all night, used it today to make a few short calls, replied to several text messages and checked/sent a couple of emails and at 17.30 I still have 95% battery left.

I have an HTC Wildfire as well, and it won't keep charge, i'm wondering if its because i charge using my laptop and USB, either way if i get 12 hours out of it i'm lucky. Can you tell me if using 3G would help, and if so how do i enable it.

 

[Leijonberg]

I have an HTC Wildfire as well, and it won't keep charge, i'm wondering if its because i charge using my laptop and USB, either way if i get 12 hours out of it i'm lucky. Can you tell me if using 3G would help, and if so how do i enable it.

Non-scientific tests has shown that 2G GPRS use less power than 3G UMTS, so that will probably not help. Check if GPS is on and Google Maps is running, that will use up a lot of power. Long shot, but not impossible

I have seen some people having trouble with HTC battery time. Perhaps the batteries are faulty? Post your battery brands and normal usage battery time, and maybe we'll see a trend here.

 

[phibar]

Well I own a HTC Wildfire, and texting is rather fast, takes about 1-3 seconds (depending) to open a message. I have my settings set to automatically delete threads with more than 20 messages so I can't comment on the space. And before I got the Wildfire people said the battery life was good, but I charged it all last night, took it off at 12pm and it is now 5pm and the battery is yellow and looks about 30%

I concur with poor battery charge life. I use my HTC Wildfire phone very little, and charge overnight with the phone on. Take phone off charge at 7 to 8 am needs recharging after 12 hours with only occasional short phone call and text. Although WIFI set to off helps extend charge time it only adds a few hours. There appears there is no way the phone will stay charged for 24 hrs with the phone on. Only solution appears to be to turn off or maybe use Airplane Mode as others have suggested, not very satisfactory.