The HTC Legend and the newer HTC Wildfire should have been allies, but they’ve ended up competing for the tricky Android middle ground — comprised of phones with many of the features of top-end phones like the HTC Desire, without the hefty price tag. Which will win this battle? Read on to find out.

Windshield
The HTC Wildfire and HTC Legend both feature 3.2-inch screens, but, diagonal size measurement aside, they couldn’t be more different. The HTC Wildfire uses a TFT LCD screen, while the HTC Legend is blessed with an AMOLED display. AMOLED screens don’t use a backlight, so offer better contrast levels — there’s always some luminiscence with a backlight, even in black parts of an image. This makes AMOLED colours appear more vivid, and blacks look blacker.

This is the headline-grabbing difference between the two phones’ screens, but it’s not the one we care about the most. We think resolution is more important. At 240×320, the HTC Wildfire’s screen has half the number of pixels as the HTC Legend’s 320×480 display. Next to each other, the HTC Wildfire screen looks much blockier than the HTC Legend’s.

To add to the Legend’s superiority, the HTC Wildfire’s screen is wider, more squat, than the Legend’s. With a more extreme aspect ratio on show, the HTC Legend has more of that “widescreen” look that makes gadgets look that bit sleeker.
Winner — HTC Legend

Body armour
Both the HTC Wildfire and HTC Legend have the strength to take on all rivals, but what are they like when pitched against each other? With HTC’s high build quality standards in evidence, it’s not an easy call.

The HTC Wildfire features a plastic battery cover that curves around to the front of the phone. We tend to pick a metal body over plastic every time, but we weill admit that the HTC Wildfire is much sturdier than your average plasticcy handset. The plastic used is thick, robust and pleasingly rugged.

… but comparing it to the HTC Legend is a bit like comparing a soldier with a kevlar vest to a great big mechanised robot from the future.

There’s something very special about the HTC Legend’s (almost) all-metal unibody construction. It makes the phone very slim, quite light, and feel like it was made just for your hand. Few phones can tease your fingertips into joy the way the HTC Legend can.

With less bulk to soak up damage, we’re not sure if the HTC Legend’s futuristic unibody armour equates to greater strength under real-world conditions though (as the phone falls out of your pocket, to clatter onto the pavement with a terrifying thud). But which would we rather have nestled in the palm of our hand? That’s an easier decision.
Winner — HTC Legend

The brains behind the brawn
Just like almost all of HTC’s Android phones, the HTC Legend and HTC Wildfire use the HTC Sense user interface. This is a custom UI laid on top of vanilla Android, to give HTC’s phones that unmistakable HTC flavour. The most important things HTC Sense adds are its neat widgets, but they’re worth having.

There’s nothing to separate the two phones on this front. They both have the latest Leap feature, which lets you zoom out to see all of your home screens at once, and all the classic Sense widgets are here too — such as Friend Stream and the collection of clocks.

The only slight advantage the HTC Legend is an ever-so slightly faster processor, at least in megahertz terms. The HTC Wildfire uses a 528MHz Qualcomm processor while the Legend has a 600MHz processor. It doesn’t amount to a huge difference, with both phones suffering from very little lag in day-to-day use.
Winner — Draw

Future conflicts
It’s always wise to consider the future when buying an Android phone. Will it continue to be supported with Android updates, or is it set to be left on the scrap heap without a military pension to help it scrape on by?

Thankfully, HTC has confirmed that both the HTC Wildfire and HTC Legend Android phones will get an Android 2.2 update — later this year, with any luck. What about Android 3.0? Don’t go holding your breath, but Android 2.2 fixes many of the problems we have with Android at present, such as the inability to install apps on your SD card.
Winner — Both

Conclusion, the final battle
The HTC Wildfire may be the newer phone, but we’d pick the HTC Legend over it any day. The superior screen, the silky-smooth unibody construction and the upcoming Android 2.2 update (even though it’s an older model) make the HTC Legend unbeatable at the £20-a-month mark.

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