HTC is among the last remaining pioneers of the mobile market still making phones, but it doesn’t mean it’s doing well like Motorola or Sony (of Sony Ericsson). It hasn’t launched any notable smartphones lately, and therefore the phones it did put out are totally on the budget side, limited to a minimal number of markets. HTC’s smartphone business remains alive, though, as this sighting of a replacement phone proves. But if the HTC Wildfire E Ultra is any indication, it’d not be that way for long.
The HTC Wildfire brand goes an extended way back, but it resurfaced in 2019 to some amount of expectation. Instead of giving the name a well-deserved revival, however, HTC has thus far filled it with low to mid-tier phones in select markets like Russia. It seems that this may be HTC’s strategy until its mobile division finally crumbles permanently.
The Wildfire E Ultra’s name suggests surpassing any Wildfire E model the corporate has put out thus far. Truth is stranger than fiction, and therefore the Google Play Console entry for this unreleased phone says otherwise. HTC could have called it the Wildfire E2 Lite, and none would be wiser.
According to the spec sheet, the phone will be powered by a Unisoc (Spreadtrum) SC9863A and have only 2GB of RAM. The 960×480 screen features a very low pixel density of 240 dpi, hinting at an outsized display over five inches. It does a minimum of run Android 11, probably a Go Edition, so it’s not all that bad.
However, it paints the image of a former smartphone giant that’s on the brink of throwing within the towel. It’s barely serving any market lately and could be losing more producing of phones than earning from them. That said, HTC also chooses either licensing its name like what BlackBerry did or providing manufacturing services. However, either option still spells the top of what was once one of the most important names within the mobile industry.
