HTC is one of the most interesting companies in the mobile industry today. Despite their recent failings financially, the Taiwanese company has been consistently launching some noteworthy devices. The HTC Butterfly is a perfect example. The Butterfly first launched in Japan as the Butterfly J and HTC later started marketing the device internationally by removing the ‘J’ suffix. India is one of the markets to receive this treatment and we recently had the device and this is what we think.
Design:
Phones with 5-inch display are considered big and though the Butterfly may not be termed as big as the original Note, Butterfly is definitely taller. Despite a slim design, the taller body makes it difficult for you to reach the top-end of the phone with a single hand. It’s not cumbersome if you have large hands but certainly an issue for people who have small or medium-sized hands.
However, keeping the tall design aside, Butterfly looks and feels great. It has a plastic body that ensures the phone is extremely light in hands. The front is graced by the huge 5-inch display with three touch-sensitive buttons on the bottom and earpiece along with a notification light, front facing camera and sensors on the front top side. The right side of the phone features the volume buttons, bottom has the microUSB port and the top is packed with 3.5mm headphone jack, SIM card slot and memory card slot and the power button. Backside features the 8 megapixel camera with LED flash and a second LED notification light.
Display:
Display is undoubtedly the biggest draw on the HTC Butterfly. It is one of the first mobile devices to sport a full HD 1080p resolution, which in retrospect has the same amount of resolution found on most televisions these days. The 5-inch Super LCD3 combined with 1920×1080 resolution, achieves a pixel density of 440ppi, which is one of the highest you’d find in a mobile device. Higher pixel density ensures the pictures and the text are crisp and to cut the long story short, it is indeed one of the best displays. If you go from a 720p display to 1080p, you won’t find much of a difference but if you go from say, WVGA to full HD, the difference is night and day.
Software & Performance:
On the software front, the phone runs Android 4.1 laden with HTC’s Sense 4+ UI. The Sense UI has undergone a sea change in recent years and the new UI makes it more usable. The lock screen gives quick and easy access to all the favourite apps and even allows users to personalise their lock screen based on what you want to see. For instance, the lock screen can be changed to show the weather, clock, Friend Stream etc. As far as personalisation of the phone goes, users can do it directly on their phones or from PC via the web browser on HTCSense.com.
The new Sense UI also supports the Media Link HD accessory, which means swiping down three fingers from anywhere on the phone allows it to connect to a larger display wirelessly.
Butterfly is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro processor clocked at 1.5GHz and 2GB RAM and needless to say, the phone is really fast. Every app and game runs smoothly and there are hardly any signs of a slowdown. To give you some perspective, here are some of the synthetic tests we ran on the device.
Music and video playback is decent as well with a good format support. Audio quality is enhanced by Beats Audio, which is activated when you plugin a headphone.
Camera:
HTC Butterfly has an 8MP camera at the back and 2.1MP on the front. HTC has adopted a unique camera interface that clubs both video and still image capture in one. The top button on the right can be used to capture still photos whereas the bottom button will initiate a video recording. The phone also supports image capture while video recording (up to 1080p). Additionally, there are a lot of scenes and effects to choose from to enhance the still images.
Here are some images shot from the HTC Butterfly.
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| HTC Butterfly Sample Shots |
Battery Life:
The phone has a 2020mAh non removable battery and though it is less by today’s smartphone standards, the phone lasts almost a day with moderate usage of the device with some web browsing, music and videos.
Conclusion:
HTC Butterfly is a good phone, no doubt but the biggest hindrance to the device is its price. The current price of the phone is around Rs. 46,000, which is way more than HTC will sell the One for later this month. If HTC manages to drop it in the range of what Sony sells the Xperia Z, Butterfly has a chance to steal some sales from Sony while the One can fight with the iPhone 5 and the upcoming Galaxy S4.
Rating: 
Pros: Performance
Cons: Price
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