HTC WildFire Budget Android Smartphone Coming in June

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HTC really knows how to pick names for its mobiles. After the Hero, the Legend and the Desire, the Taiwanese mobile manufacturer is now set to release the WildFire, a budget Android smartphone that'll be unleashed on the UK in June. Plus, word on the street is that it's likely to be offered free with monthly contracts starting at around £20.

With the likes of ZTE, Acer, Huawei and Samsung (to name just a few) busy flooding the market with budget smartphones, HTC doesn't want to be left out. So after the Tattoo, a small handset destined for skinny-jeans pockets all over the land, HTC is hoping the new WildFire handset will burn up the competition in the lucrative and fast-growing market for low-cost smartphones for young, mobile-mad users.

Decent spec for an entry-level phone

The WildFire runs on Android 2.1 (like the Google Nexus One and the HTC Legend) and has a 3.2-inch capacitive touch-screen. The Sense interface is also on hand to take care of touch controls and simple social networking.

The WildFire looks fairly similar to HTC's Legend and Desire, depending on which angle you look at it from. On the inside, you'll find the same components as the Hero, and we reckon the screen looks very similar to the one previously used in the Tattoo. Maybe HTC had a backlog of components it needed to get rid of ...

In its mission to attract younger users, HTC has equipped the WildFire with an application called Friend Stream, giving you a real-time view of everything that's going on in your social networks. Native functionality also allows you to group Facebook contacts with contacts in the phonebook, and you can even add someone's Facebook profile picture to their contact entry in your phone.

What's more, the WildFire has a 5-Megapixel camera, a 528 MHz Qualcomm processor, as well as 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The WildFire is due for release on T-Mobile in June and is expected to be free with monthly contracts costing around £20. Obviously, it'll be available in a range of colours too.



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