The HTC Wildfire is designed to be a lower cost companion to the HTC Désire, bringing HTC's useful HTC Sense and Friend Stream applications into a handset that's more affordable than the top-of-the-line Desire smartphone.

Inside is a fairly modest 528MHz processor, quite a lot slower than the Desire and even the HTC Legend, and the same as found in the HTC Tattoo. The specification and anticipated Q3 release indicate that this might be the replacement for the Tattoo, but with a vastly improved specification. The Wildfire's 384MB of RAM should be sufficient for most applications.

The display is a 240 x 320 pixel panel, which is about as basic as Android phones get.. although at 3.2" it's certainly a usable size. On the back is a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash and autofocus, which should be good enough for the vast majority of customers, although the Nokia N8 has 12 megapixels and broadly the same target market.

This is an Android 2.1 device, and in addition to the HTC applications we have already mentioned, there are a huge number of One novel feature with the HTC Wildfire is to be able to recommend an application to friends via SMS, email or a social networking site. This is a good idea in practice as it will help to find decent applications in the very crowded Android Market, but it is easy to see that this feature could be abused.

This is a 3.5G device with download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 384 Kbps on HSPA. The HTC Wildfire supports WiFi as well, as well as quad-band GSM. GPS and a digital compass are included, and the Wildfire should have access to Google's new free turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps.

Android 2.1 will cope with most types of media file, and there is also an FM radio and 3.5mm audio socket. Of course, the Wildfire comes with a microSD slot for storing music and video clips.

The HTC Wildfire should be available during Q3 2010 (our sources say July in the UK) in white, black, red and brown colours. There's no indication of price although our best guess is that it will retail for between €250 to €300 when it hits the streets.

HTC HD Mini

The HTC HD Mini follows a recent fashion of making "mini" version of big handsets, in this case the HTC HD2. The HD2 is a really big handset, so can the HD Mini reproduce its features in a more pocketable form?

Well.. sort of. The main selling point with the HD2 is probably the large 4.3" 480 x 800 pixel touchscreen display. The HD Mini comes with a much smaller (although still practical) 3.2" 320 x 480 pixel panel. The other features really are pretty similar though - the HD Mini supports GPS with a digital compass, WiFi and 3.5G data connectivity and comes with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 plus a number of other software enhancements from HTC. Multimedia support includes an FM radio, Windows Media Player and a 3.5mm audio socket. There's 5 megapixel camera on the back with autofocus as well.

At 110 grams in weight and 103 x 58 x 12mm in size, the HD Mini sheds about 30% of the weight and footprint of the HD2, so the HD Mini is really no bigger than most standard mobile phones. However, the processor has also been cut back - it's just a 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 as opposed to the 1GHz processor in the HD2, but then the lower resolution screen will reduce the amount of processing that will be needed. The internal 1200 mAh battery provides up to 7 hours talktime on 3G and 20 days standby time.

One really unusual feature is that the HTC HD Mini is designed to look good with the back off, although in practical terms this is not something you'd do very often. Undo the four prominent screws on the back and there is a neatly designed inner panel that holds the SIM card and memory card. This isn't perhaps as pointless as it first looks - it will be one of the first things that customers see when unpacking the phone, and showing this sort of obsessive attention to detail will leave a positive impression in customers' minds.

Despite the "HD" name, the HTC Mini HD can really be considered as a small step up from last year's HTC Touch2, but it is still a powerful and useful Windows smartphone for those people who don't want to carry around something that's too big.

The HTC HD Mini should be available in Europe from April onwards.

HTC Desire

Launched at the same time as the HTC Legend, the HTC Desire is an Android 2.1 handset with HTC's Sense UI loaded on top and improved social networking support included, but the Desire comes with a much bigger display and packs in a lot more pixels.

It looks a little like the HTC manufactured  Google Nexus One, and indeed the specifications are very similar. But the HTC Desire isn't simply a Nexus One with HTC branding, as there are a number of improvements.. but you will have to wait until sometime next quarter to get your hands on one.

Inside is a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which is about as fast as a mobile phone processor will go. The 3.7" 800 x 480 pixel display uses OLED technology to ensure that it is bright and clear, and with this sort of resolution and processor power, the Desire should be ideal for web surfing and video playback. Internal memory is an impressive 576 MB of RAM which should allow plenty of Applications

On the back is a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, the sort of thing that most rival Android devices also offer. There's a multimedia player, microSD expandable memory, FM radio and a 3.5mm audio socket.

At 135 grams in weight, the HTC Desire might seem a little on the heavy side, but for a large screen device such as this it is fairly average, the Desire is also a little on the large size physically coming in at 119 x 60 x 12mm, but again this is fairly typical. The large 1400 mAh battery can power the Desire for up to 6.5 hours talktime and 15 days standby time on 3G.

Unlike the Nexus One, the HTC Desire has been overhauled with HTC's Sense User interface which gives a slightly more polished look and feel. HTC have also developed an application called Friend Stream which integrates all the social networking updates from your contacts in one place. Flash 10.1 support is built in as standard, and of course as this is an Android device then you can add more applications as you wish. The user interface supports multi-touch use as well.

HTC say that the Desire should be available in April, although no guidance was given on price, we would guess that it will be fairly expensive though and be something in the region of €550.

HTC Shift

Our  first glimpse of the HTC Shift was way back in March of this year, and finally HTC have announced that the Shift really is coming soon - next month, in fact.

HTC are best known for their Windows smartphones, but the HTC Shift is actually a full-blown PC, albeit a tiny one, that uses HTC's phone expertise to the full.

A quick look around the hardware shows that this is an 800 gram device with a clever sliding mechanism that allows it to be used as a tablet or ultraportable laptop. The display is a 7" 800x480 pixel touchscreen, and there's a VGA resolution camera for web conferencing. The Shift doesn't have a digital camera in the traditional sense, but it would be rather impractical in a device of this size.

Delve deeper, and it turns out that the HTC Shift has a huge 1 GB of RAM, an 800 MHz Intel processor and WiFi. The Shift has either a 40 or 80 GB hard disk. Mobile connectivity is via tri-band HSDPA or UMTS, and the Shift also has quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE. There's also a USB 2.0 port, VGA out and 3.5mm audio jack plug. To top it all, the Shift has fingerprint recognition for added security.

Clever stuff, but the surprising thing about the HTC Shift is that it runs Windows Vista Business, so this is a fully-featured little laptop that can run most things that you'd throw at it.

However, HTC haven't finished with their expertise just yet. The Shift also comes with a clever thing called SnapVUE which is a lightweight Application So.. it's not really a phone and it's more than a subnotebook. We think that the HTC Shift is an interesting crossover device, perhaps similar in some ways to the Nokia N800 or the sadly cancelled Palm Foleo.

There are a couple of drawbacks, and perhaps the most obvious one is that the HTC Shift isn't the sort of thing that you'd want to use for voice calls, probably not even when using a Bluetooth headset.. but then the Shift is aimed at power users for whom it would make perfect sense to have a mobile phone too, remember that it only needs to be quite basic.

The other drawback is more serious - the choice of Windows Vista seemed like a good idea when the Shift was announced in the spring, but Vista has flopped badly in the marketplace and it's a complete resource hog. This isn't HTC's fault, but it's a shame that Vista's poor reputation might damage the Shift's chances. Of course, some enterprising person might find a way of porting Linux or even Windows XP onto the Shift which might prove a popular choice for hardware and Software

HTC say that the Shift will be available from November this year, although no pricing information or carrier 

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