Is the Wildfire Froyo 2.2 Update a Myth
I am rather annoyed, to put it very mildly, at the dismissive attitude HTC has towards its HTC Wildfire customers. Yes, HTC Wildfire is their entry-level smartphone. Yes, it is rather less expensive than its big brother ‘Desire‘. Yes, it has a smaller CPU processing speed than Desire (528 MHz compared to 1GHz), a lower resolution screen, a 5-megapixel camera compared to Desire’s 8 megapixels, and all of this sums up the reason why the price is so much lower. But this does not mean we should be treated like buffoons, lesser individuals, unworthy of anticipated updates that have been dangled like a carrot on a stick, taunting us for far too long. HTC Wildfire is one of HTC’s newest offerings, only being released in June, and it is anticipated as being one of the must-haves this Xmas. Although I do not expect this phone to be supported forever, the Froyo 2.2 update should not even be questioned, it should be 100% definite.
I rather think that we are being served a large portion of unforgivable injustice that leaves a bitter taste on our tongues and we need to lobby this matter, demand that we receive Froyo 2.2 and quickly. As it stands, from my observations of android forums, frustrations are running extremely high, we want to be able to access all the apps not available on 2.1 and more importantly, we want the ability to store them easily to sd card with the app to sd capability of Froyo 2.2. There may be other ways of enabling the app to sd such as rooting your phone and following other procedures but this is not a path I am willing to walk down. It’s all very nice that the HTC Wildfire has the ability to support a 32 GB memory card, but unless we are total music, photo, and video freaks what on earth are we going to do with that amount of space?
I feel that my phone is rendered almost useless and loses the ‘right’ to be classed as a smartphone without this ability, it becomes more of a ‘crippled’ smartphone. I need to be able to store as many apps as I like as I review them on my blog, but even if this was not the case I haven’t enough internal memory space for the apps I want to keep for myself. Also, I would like my phone to run just that bit faster with Froyo 2.2 than it runs with Eclair 2.1. Besides this, there are a host of other features we are missing out on whilst we wait in limbo as they play a weird kind of guessing game with us, such as wifi tethering, and the list goes on.
If HTC wishes to develop an army of brand loyal android users they really ought to think of addressing this gigantic issue otherwise we will address it for them by taking our customs and money elsewhere. After all, the phones we have at present are no better than a digital camera with nowhere to put a memory card and limited internal storage.
I don’t believe we should be given standard responses to inquiries that we take the effort to send to HTC, almost always the same as the one I received this morning.
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With regards to your query, at the moment there is no confirmation on when or if the wildfire will be receiving the 2.2 updates. I can advise you to keep checking our website for any updates in the future.
Sincerely, Georgina
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So I am asking for your support in my campaign to lobby HTC and get a definite answer, rather than being forced to play this cat and mouse game. I intend to gain support in the form of a poll and any supporting comments you wish to post, after which I intend to write a physical letter to the HTC headquarters, to the person in the highest position with the link to the gathered support. I would like to be able to send the letter within a couple of weeks so this really needs to be speedy. As soon as I have received an official response it will be available to view here as an update on this post, and so will any further correspondence. Here’s hoping for the Froyo 2.2 update and before Xmas if possible. I intend to fight the corner for HTC Wildfire owners to the bitter end and demand that we receive the update. Let the battle commence!
Thank you for your support.
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A link for details of all features of Froyo 2.2.
To Clarify, Froyo 2.2 offers among other features:
- Wi-Fi / USB tethering
- App to SD capability
- Flash Player 10.1 (There is a rumor that this won’t be available because of the Wildfire’s CPU)
- Speed up to 5x faster than 2.1 for browsing or using apps
- Updated onscreen Camera Controls
- Improved Voice Recognition
- Pin code locks instead of just pattern locks
- Cloud-to-Device messaging
Update: Froyo has been officially released early this morning (December 20th) across Europe. My phone has updated with no problem. Thank you for all of your support concerning this, I would like to believe we had something to do with hurrying HTC along!