HTC Wildfire S 2012 Review: Frustrating Mediocrity

I already reviewed this phone here. Let's see what has changed a year later.

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.

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.

The First Job

Many a time a graduate fresh out of college will make the mistake of selecting and working a job based on the salary offered. This is by itself not an issue but the reliance on the salary offered as the sole criteria is. So new job seekers remedy this by putting the profile of the profession as the first priority in searching for the right job, but that leads to a debate as to which is more important: profile or salary. Logically speaking, the two should match each other as the pay can be used to gauge the worth of the profile (or the employee). But, there is another criterion not usually apparent to first timers.

A commonly overlooked aspect of a newcomer's search for the beginning of a work life is the work culture. You are going to spend a significant number of hours of your life working. So, it makes good sense to take into account the aspects of work beyond the pay and the responsibilities. People and work policies form a major part of the work experience. These work conditions must be evaluated before committing to a profession.

Usually, this complex factor of the work experience is only discovered well into the first job. Sometimes the consequences of overlooking this causes dissatisfaction that finally leads to attrition. As human beings, we need to understand our own motivations and productivity choices we make because they can and will have social underpinnings. Simply doing work mechanically under the guise of professionalism is not feasible. Individual and group expectations need to be met and satisfied. Satisfaction cannot be met by the remuneration received and job description alone. In fact, true satisfaction comes from the individual satisfaction from achievement, a sense of purpose, and enjoyment at work.

The first experience with a job aims for the growth possible with the job. It is not unusual that the individual's expectations cannot be met in the first job. The first-time worker will experience the interaction with and reaction of the entities in the work environment. If the worker is working in a company, the company itself is an entity that the worker must deal with. Some companies may not have the employees best interests at hand and may stagnate an employee's career with false commitments.

A company may eschew the employees wants in favor of subverting his or her goals to serve the company's own needs. It, or they -- the people higher up -- may attempt to shift the employee's focus from his or her long-term goals to that of short term goals. Another method would be to offer the employee a chance to pursue what is ostensibly his or her goal that is not recognized as formal responsibility that proves to serve no change for the betterment of the employee. These are efforts that could effectively stave off a worker's ambitions.

Negotiations by the entity, in this case, the company, in order to retain the employee, may degenerate into arguments to convince the employee to stay by giving him or her airs and grace. At this point the solution is simple for both parties as the subtleties of company professionalism have been cast off by inadvertently casting off the the employee's desire to stay on. The company may employ attacks on the person herself, calling her motivations and even her character into question, e.g., implying (or stating) that she is confused. A company may throw a red herring to cast doubts on the avenues beyond the company.

No doubt the company is doing itself a great disservice but not all companies need be like the one mentioned. In fact, many realize the importance of their employees and do their best to invest in them. In any organization, an organization's workers are its greatest asset. A satisfied, productive employee does his or her part in a productive organization that successfully imbibes the human aspect of a corporation. And this is where the job seeker will head next.