HTC Wildfire E Ultra Is A Poor Sign Of Life

HTC is one of the last remaining pioneers of the mobile phone 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 smartphone of late, and the phones that it did put out are mostly on the budget side, limited to a very small number of markets. HTC's smartphone business is still alive, though, as this sighting of a new phone proves. But if the HTC Wildfire E Ultra is any indication, it might not be that way for long.

The HTC Wildfire brand goes a long way back, but it resurfaced in 2019 to some amount of expectation. Rather than giving the name a well-deserved revival, however, HTC has so far filled it with low to mid-tier phones in select markets like Russia. It seems that this will be HTC's strategy until its mobile division finally crumbles for good.

The Wildfire E Ultra's name suggests that it would surpass any Wildfire E model the company has put out so far. Truth is stranger than fiction, and the Google Play Console entry for this unreleased phone says otherwise. HTC could have called it the Wildfire E2 Lite, and none would have been the wiser.

According to the spec sheet, the phone will be powered by a Unisoc (Spreadtrum) SC9863A and have only 2GB of RAM. The 960x480 screen has a very low pixel density of 240 dpi, hinting at a large display over five inches. It does at least run Android 11, probably a Go Edition, so it's not all that bad.

However, it paints the picture of a former smartphone giant that is close to throwing in the towel. It is barely serving any market these days and might be losing more producing of phones than earning from them. That said, HTC also has the option of either licensing its name like what BlackBerry did or providing manufacturing services, but either option still spells the end of what was once one of the biggest names in the mobile industry.