The model was announced on 15 February 2011 at the Mobile World Congress[4] and released in Europe three months later.

[5] HTC Wildfire S is considered to be an update of 2010's HTC Wildfire, having a newer, 600 MHz processor by Qualcomm, support for the faster Bluetooth 3.0 specification, and a screen with double the resolution (HVGA, updated from QVGA).

The device runs on Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread,[6] and comes with an upgrade to HTC's Sense UI.

In the United Kingdom, the Wildfire S was available from several carriers, including 3 (Hutchison 3G), Vodafone, Orange, Tesco Mobile, T-Mobile and O2.

In Ireland, it was available through networks Meteor, eMobile, Vodafone, O2, 3 (Hutchison 3G), and Tesco Mobile.