HTC has officially taken the wraps off its new Butterfly 2, a new 5-inch smartphone joining the company's Butterfly range of devices.
The handset made its debut at an event in Tokyo and will go on sale across Asia starting next month. The HTC Butterfly 2 will be available from KDDI in Japan, through Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, CSL in Hong Kong, as well as a number of other carriers across South Asia.
"Our consumers always pursue perfection. Therefore, we chose the partner that we know will offer the best smartphones in the market," said KDDI President Takashi Tanaka. "Since the HTC J series was released, it has become the most popular phone in our product portfolio."
"HTC Butterfly 2 follows HTC's iconic design and globally acclaimed user experience," added HTC CEO Peter Chou. "Its elegant appearance and fantastic performance will certainly provide consumers with the best experience ever."
In terms of specifications, the new HTC Butterfly 2 comes with a 5-inch full HD 1080p display, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz, 2GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of internal storage capacity, and microSD support for additional memory of up to 128GB.
The Butterfly 2 retains the Duo Camera setup of the HTC One M8, but it's comprised of a 13-megapixel rear camera instead of the UltraPixel one found on the flagship. A 5-megapixel front shooter, meanwhile, will take "beautiful selfies with ease," according to HTC.
Moreover, the new HTC Butterfly 2 boasts the company's much-touted BoomSound technology for superior audio. As a matter of fact, HTC claims that the smartphone's sound system is actually 25 percent louder than the HTC One's, and that's due to an enhanced speaker layout.
The Butterfly 2 is also certified to be dust- and water-resistant, but some may be disappointed to hear that unlike the premium HTC One M8, this model comes with a plastic design. Nevertheless, the polycarbonate build should translate to a more affordable price tag.
The new HTC Butterfly 2 will make its retail debut in Japan first, where it will land on KDDI as the HTC J Butterfly HTL23. The handset will then hit Taiwan on Sept. 2, followed by Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries later on. It remains unclear whether the Butterfly 2 will ever make it to the U.S., as HTC has not offered any details in this regards.
