14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, Three UK has just announced that the HTC Explorer is now available for free with 24 months contracts. However, the current offer is only valid until November 30.
Potential customers who want to grab the HTC Explorer will have to commit to a two-year agreement with one of the three available monthly plans: Text 100 All-you-can-eat. £18 (29 USD or 21 EUR), Text 500 £20 (32 USD or 23 EUR) or The One Plan £27 (43 USD or 31.5 EUR).
Unfortunately, the HTC Explorer is one of the less featured Android smartphones launched by the Taiwanese handset maker in the last few months.
The Explorer is even lower in specs as the Wildfire S, which is also available from Three UK for £150 (240 USD or 175 EUR) on PAYG (pay as you go).
The only advantage over the Wildfire S would be the fact that it comes with HTC's latest Sense 3.5 user interface and that it features support for HSDPA (14.4 Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76 Mbps).
Otherwise, both HTC Wildfire S and Explorer are equipped with low-performance 600 MHz Qulacomm MSM7227 processors and Adreno 200 graphics processing units.
In addition, both pack 512 MB of ROM, 512 MB or RAM, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB). However, customers who choose the HTC Wildfire S will also receive a free 2GB memory card in the sales package.
Just like the Wildfire S, HTC Explorer runs Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform and provides access to more than 250,000 apps via Android Market.
There's also a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with 262k colors and 320 x 480 pixels resolution, along with accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate and proximity sensor for auto turn-off.
Battery life won't be a problem for the HTC Explorer users as the manufacturer rated it for up to 485 hours of standby time or up to 8 hours of talk time.
