Legendary smartphone brand HTC officially reentered the Android market last year. Unfortunately, the company’s U24 Pro wasn’t a stunner, and it seems that HTC is continuing down a less-than-innovative path with the launch of its new Wildfire E5 Plus handset.

Sold for the equivalent of roughly $95, the Wildfire E5 Plus is just a cheap Android phone—no flash, no excitement, just a really low price. It’s currently sold in Vietnam, and HTC hasn’t clarified whether the phone will recieve a global release.

Hello, Old Friend

HTC is one of the most important names in Android’s history. It manufactured the first Android phone, plus all of Google’s Nexus devices and two Pixel handsets. Early HTC phones had amazing hardware, and the company’s “Sense” theming laid the foundation for Android’s current UI design philosophy.

But HTC’s role as a dominant Android brand began deteriorating in the mid 2010s. This is partially due to changes in consumer preferences; “weird” phones became unpopular out of nowhere, and HTC was really good at doing weird stuff. However, business decisions and acquisitions are what really led to HTC’s departure from Android. Instead of adapting to an ever-changing market, HTC dumped billions of dollars into slick-but-bizarre Robert Downey Jr. advertisements. Startups continually poached the company’s talent, and in 2017, Google bought the HTC smartphone team for $1.1 billion.

The absence of HTC’s ballsyness is plainly evident in today’s smartphone market. Instead of selling innovative or risky products, smartphone manufacturers pump out iterative slabs of unexciting plastic and glass. This is particularly true in the United States, where sanctions on semi-innovative brands like Huawei and Oppo have created an artificially narrow market. There are only three or four relevant phone brands in the U.S., and none of them are willing to rock the boat.

So, What’s With This Cheap Phone?

In mid-2024, we learned that HTC was preparing to reenter the smartphone market with a new flagship device, the U24 Pro. We knew that it wouldn’t be a risky or experimental phone, but nonetheless, we were excited by the prospect of increased competition. If HTC dragged customers away from Motorola, for example, then Motorola might have more incentive to sell something innovative.

The U24 Pro turned out to be an extremely generic upper-mid-range Android phone with a minor hint of HTC fan-service (it had the famous Sense widget but no other software theming). Some people bought it, some people like it. In any case, it failed to make a real splash.

HTC’s newest phone, the $95 Wildfire E5 Plus, continues the trend toward genericism. It’s just a cheap Android phone. That’s not to say it’s a bad product; a 6.75-inch 720p display, Unisoc T606 chipset, 50MP main camera, and 5,000mAh battery are more than acceptable for $95. But the Wildfire E5 Plus, like the U24 Pro, is a footnote in the current Android market. It won’t change anything, and it doesn’t carry the true legacy of the HTC brand.

I realize that the super-duper-cheap smartphone market has a guaranteed customer base. If you sell a $95 phone with a decent screen and a couple of cameras, people will buy it. But there’s always room for innovation. Bring back the weird HTC, please.

If you happen to be in Vietnam, you can buy the Wildfire E5 Plustoday for approximately $95 (2,590 million Vietnamese Dong). HTC hasn’t announced plans for a global rollout, and the company’s previous Wildfire-series phones (going back to 2010) were never officially sold in the United States, though some models entered the European market.

Source: HTC via Digital Trends