The HTC Wildfire smartphone is now available on PAYG from Vodafone via E2Save, a subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse, for only £44.90 plus a compulsory £10 top-up. The phone is refurbished and is very likely to be unlocked.

The HTC Wildfire is a decent entry-level device powered by the Qualcomm MSM7225 SoC clocked at 528MHz with 384MB of RAM, 512MB onboard storage, a microSD card slot, a 5-megapixel camera, a 3.2in 480 x 320 pixel display, an optical trackpad, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and a weight of only 118g. We took a look at it in September 2010 and found out it to be an impressive low-cost Android smartphone, even though it was priced at £229 back then.

Our reviewer, Sandra Vogel, said at the time that “the screen [of the HTC Wildfire] is small and it is rather confined for some uses, but overall the HTC Wildfire offers the key elements that a modern smartphone needs plus some useful extras.”

The phone has since been replaced by the Wildfire S and the Desire C. Other handsets that sell for roughly the same outlay include the LG Optimus L3, which has similar characteristics, and the Orange San Francisco 2, which is a much better and bigger handset than the Wildfire.