Usability
The Wildfire S power button and rocker volume buttons keys do not register presses unless firmly and precisely pressed - irritating when you want to quickly silence the phone during a call.
Typing is also difficult on the phone. You cannot type fast in either orientation. You need both precise finger contact and patience to make sure the phone registers each press. This is not a phone for frequent messaging.
Battery Life
Real world usage with the Carat app keeping tabs shows that without 3G the phone lasts for 10 hours, so frequent charging is required and the charging is slow, very slow. Which brings us to the included charger. The charger's output is only 200 mA. The phone takes approximately three hours with it sleeping. Using the phone during that time makes charging even slower.
Service Network
If your battery can't hold charge, good luck getting a spare. HTC India service and support is almost nonexistent. Yes, the call centres are there, but they never give written replies and they call you saying they don't have knowledge of battery pricing. Some phones at launch had software issues with buggy dialers and visits to the service centre meant a week without your phone and then getting it back unchanged. The website also lacks support articles on the phone.
The last update was in July and no change log is given for it. That's not required though because it changes nothing: no OS update, no dialer bug fixes, no wake delay fix, no Sense update, no inbuilt app updates, and no promised root access update. The lack of ICS is the most glaring. The reason given is that the Wildfire S does not meet the specifications for the OS. This is contradicted by the identical specs of the ICS-ready HTC One V.
App compatibility and performance is another issue. Flipboard, Chrome, and Adobe Flash are incompatible with the Wildfire S. Gaming can be skipped on this device.
If your battery can't hold charge, good luck getting a spare. HTC India service and support is almost nonexistent. Yes, the call centres are there, but they never give written replies and they call you saying they don't have knowledge of battery pricing. Some phones at launch had software issues with buggy dialers and visits to the service centre meant a week without your phone and then getting it back unchanged. The website also lacks support articles on the phone.
Software Updates
The last update was in July and no change log is given for it. That's not required though because it changes nothing: no OS update, no dialer bug fixes, no wake delay fix, no Sense update, no inbuilt app updates, and no promised root access update. The lack of ICS is the most glaring. The reason given is that the Wildfire S does not meet the specifications for the OS. This is contradicted by the identical specs of the ICS-ready HTC One V.
App compatibility and performance is another issue. Flipboard, Chrome, and Adobe Flash are incompatible with the Wildfire S. Gaming can be skipped on this device.
