HTC Butterfly S now official, it’s a better One

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 19 Jun 2013

HTC Taiwan has just announced the Butterfly S, the successor to the long forgotten Butterfly phone that the company launched late last year and replaced just a handful of months later with the aluminum clad One. Americans know the Butterfly better as the Droid DNA.

So what’s this new phone all about? It has the same front facing speakers as the HTC One. It has the same Ultrapixel camera. It has a faster 1.9 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chip (1.7 GHz in the One). It has a larger 3,200 mAh battery (2,600 mAh in the One). And of course, like the first Butterfly, it too has a 5 inch 1080p panel. It also has a microSD card slot. Unlike the One, however, the Butterfly S doesn’t have 4G LTE support.

Will this thing land in your respective country? My gut says no, that HTC wants to keep this device restricted to Asian markets so that they can focus all their efforts on the One. I do hope I’m wrong however. If I were in the market for a new phone, this Butterfly S would be a device I’d strongly consider, especially given that it has a larger screen (5 inches versus 4.7 inches) than the One.

That and the larger battery. You can never have enough juice.

Additional Reading: VR-Zone China has a nice detailed spec sheet.

Update: Just did the math. The Butterfly S has a 23% larger battery than the Galaxy S4, despite having roughly the same spec sheet. Yes, the phone weighs 160 grams and is almost 11 mm thick at its thickest point, but who cares?

Update: Press photo embedded below.