HTC Wildfire review: Desire Mini

Multi-touch image gallery

The gallery has the usual main menu list-with-thumbnail structure. The Albums app automatically locates images and videos no matter where they are stored. Images and videos stored in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder - quite effective file management.

Unfortunately, the gallery will start reindexing the content each time you open it and it does so even when you open a file for an instant and then get back to the thumbnail view. And that's a bugger as when cards are full of content it's quite slow to complete.

Right next to the folder's name is a figure indicating the number of images stored. Each sub-album has a thumbnail of the latest image. The contextual menu of the main Album view has a single shortcut to the settings menu. There is also a camera shortcut, but it’s only available once you start browsing any of the sub-folders.

The Albums and some of the simple menu settings

At the bottom of the main album there are three virtual buttons - one for the actual folder list, another for Facebook and the final one for Flickr. The latter two display images from either account or those posted by your friends.

The Facebook app in Albums is great

Anywhere in the gallery except the main Album view you can launch the camera or camcorder to capture new images, share them on Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, HTC Mail, Messages, Peep and Picasa, or eventually delete the selected image.

Taking an image is possible even while browsing Facebook photos, direct uploading is even easier

In the HTC Wildfire image folders you can choose between grid and filmstrip view. You can also mass delete images, but mass copy and paste options are still unavailable.

While you cannot copy/paste images from folder to folder (you'd need a proper file manager for that), you can still share multiple images from your albums on Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, HTC Mail, Messages, Peep and Picasa.

Grid type of view • viewing an image

The HTC Wildfire supports multi-touch and you can take the full advantage of this while browsing your images. Zooming in and out is done in the same fashion as on the Apple iPhone. You can zoom to 100% with simple double tap on the screen.

Smooth finger-sweep browsing of images and pinch zoom

Poor video player

Video files can be accessed only from the Albums' subfolder as there is no dedicated video player icon in the main menu. The video files can also be viewed as a grid or filmstrip and can be shared via Gmail, HTC mail, Messages or YouTube.

Portrait and landscape views

The video player application on the HTC Wildfire has seen some cosmetic changes, but is still quite basic. The only new addition is the full screen mode, where the original clip is stretched / cropped to fit the screen.

As expected, the player is capable of playing only 3GP and MP4 videos up to QVGA resolution, which means that you will have to convert most your videos for watching on the HTC Wildfire.

Familiar music player

As with the rest of the multimedia department, the music player is the same as in the HTC Legend and the Desire.

The standard music library view is the Artists section, but you can easily switch to one of the other six tabs beneath, which are for Albums, All Songs, Playlists, Genres, Composers and Purchased.

The music library

The now playing user interface, though very sleek and more comfortable doesn't offer new features.

The new player interface is nice, though no new features inside

We were disappointed to find no contextual search in the music player for songs and related stuff on YouTube or Google.

The other music player weaknesses of the Android platform still need addressing too – there are no equalizer presets, nor any alternative visualizations.