Early this morning at a launch event in Taiwan, HTC announced the successor to its Butterfly smartphone, the HTC Butterfly S. Taking cues from the HTC One, arguably the best smartphone on the market, the HTC Butterfly is equipped with a number of entertainment features including an UltraPixel lens sensor and Boom Sound speakers as well as powerful under the hood capabilities.
The UltraPixel sensor is attached to the 4 megapixel rear-facing shooter to accompany its front-facing 2.1 megapixel wide-angle brethren. Imaging technology is all the rage these days, with the likes of Nokia and Samsung upping the ante by burgeoning the cameras on their own respective devices.
Expect a respectable 5-inch Super LCD 3 display with 1080 resolution, a vigorous 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB of memory, 16GB of internal storage with MicroSD support, and a hefty 3200mAh battery. The device will run on Android’s 4.2.2 version of its Jelly Bean mobile operating system.
There’s been no word yet as to a U.S. release date or a ballpark figure for a U.S. price tag, though the handset is scheduled for retail availability in the Asia Pacific markets in July and will be sold for the American dollar equivalent of roughly $766.
Interesting to note is the ‘S’ branding for the next-generation HTC phone. Apple of course, has marketed its next-gen versions of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 with an S that Tim Cook confirmed stands for Siri, Apple’s signature voice-recognition search feature. The expected version upgrade for the iPhone 5, due out sometime this fall along with iOS 7 and a supposed low-cost iPhone handset, has been unofficially called the iPhone 5S to follow suit. After a botched release of the HTC One where it was delayed for months and an internal company shake up where 5 America-based executives left the company, could HTC be trying to steal some of Apple’s thunder?
Time for some HTC users to weigh in. What do you think about your HTC device and how do you think the Butterfly S will compare? Will the Butterfly S be a formidable device and bolster sales for HTC?
