HTC doesn’t have the share it once enjoyed in the smartphone market, ever since it pivoted to VR. But HTC is under new management now, and the brand is planning to resurrect its smartphone department. The new HTC CEO announced in an interview that the manufacturer will be releasing a 5G device this year. However, ahead of this release, HTC has launched a budget-friendly offering -- the HTC Wildfire R70.
The HTC Wildfire R70 features a 6.53-inch display that produces an HD+ resolution and boasts a dewdrop notch, just like any other Oppo or Huawei mid-ranger. Housed inside this notch is a modest 8-megapixel selfie shooter. A triple-camera setup sits on the top-left corner, flanked by a rear-facing fingerprint scanner.
The primary of these three lenses is a 16-megapixel shooter, coupled with a pair of 2-megapixel depth and macro cameras. The bezels are next to non-existent, but the chin seems chunkier than we’d like.
All in all, the HTC Wildfire R70 shows off a tame, and somewhat cookie-cutter design. This can be a let down if you contrast it to HTC’s original and innovative designs from the beginning of the decade. You can pick from Aurora Blue and Night Black gradients.
Under its hood, the phone packs an outdated MediaTek Helio P23 chipset that debuted in 2017, with a Mali G71 MP2 GPU and an octa-core processor built into it. HTC opted for an entry-level memory configuration to pair with this MediaTek platform. The phone runs on Android Pie, but with its two gigs of RAM and 32 GB of storage, we don’t expect the performance to be as breezy. That said, you can expand the storage up to 256 GB with a microSD card.
A traditional micro-USB port powers up the phone’s 4,000 mAh battery, with support for 10W fast-charging. HTC Price details are not shared for the phone yet, but once it does, we’ll learn how the Wildfire R70 measures up against other 2020 entry-level releases.