HTC Butterfly S - Supersized One (Updated)

*Updated as of 10th July 2013 - Originally published as a preliminary review on 9th July, we've since completed all our tests and updated the article to a full review, complete with ratings. For those who've read our article previously, you can jump direct to our Performance and Conclusion page.

Overview

The first Butterfly established itself as a very competent Android smartphone with its stunning 5-inch display, good build quality and great handling. It was only let down by the lack of 4G LTE connectivity. The international market shared the same sentiments - the Butterfly became so popular that the first wave of shipments had fallen short of demand. 

News of a second generation Butterfly model surfaced in March after HTC's Chief Marketing Officer Ben Ho told Focus Taiwan that  the company "will launch a successor to the device under the same Butterfly brand name" although he did not reveal the availability of the device. Following that in the next quarter, HTC officially announced the next generation Butterfly model, also known as Butterfly S, at a launch event in Taiwan on 20^th June.

This is barely half a year after it unveiled its flagship model, the One in London. So where does the Butterfly S stand in the company's portfolio? Are its specs better than the HTC One? Can the Butterfly S hold the fort for HTC? Well, let's find out in this review. But first, let's have a quick look at its specs and how it compares:-

Key highlights of the HTCButterfly S Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean 5-inch Super LCD 3 display / 1,920 x 1,080 pixels Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core 1.9GHz processor 2GB RAM 16GB internal storage microSD support up to 64GB HTC UltraPixel rear camera 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera / wide angle lens 4G LTE micro-SIM 3,200mAh battery Dimensions: 144.5 x 70.5 x 10.6mm Weight: 160g Price and Availability: S$988 from 27 July at all three telcos.

Design

HTC kept everything we liked and disliked about the original Butterfly on its latest S iteration. It still has the plastic construction, which is a step down from the anodized aluminum body of the HTC One. While we miss the premium build quality of its hero counterpart, the Butterfly S still feels solid enough on its own.

When it comes to ergonomic design, nobody comes as close as HTC. The tapered back and smooth plastic provide a very comfortable feel in the hands, something that only the HTC One can match. However, the Butterfly S is not without its shortfalls.

The Butterfly S boasts a bigger battery capacity, but this also means that it is bulkier than its siblings; it is the heaviest (160g) and thickest (10.6mm) 5-inch phone that we've reviewed so far. The differences are apparent in both numbers and feel; check out how it compares with other phones of its class (phone thickness, followed by weight):

• ASUS PadFone Infinity - 6.3 ~ 8.9mm, 145g
• HTC Butterfly - 9.08mm, 140g
• HTC One - 9.3mm, 143g
• Samsung Galaxy S4 - 7.9mm, 130g
• Sony Xperia Z - 7.9mm , 146g

The Butterfly S also retains the perforated metal strips on the sides of the device, which serve no functional purpose other than enhancing the overall aesthetics. The micro-SIM and microSD card slots are still located at the top side of the device beside the Power button (which also doubles as an IR control) and the 3.5mm audio output jack. As noted in the review of its predecessor, you need a pin to eject the SIM card tray and before you even do that, some effort has to be spared to remove the cover.

It is noteworthy to mention that the Butterfly S, unlike the IPX-5 rated Butterfly, is not water resistant. Its micro-USB port is not covered too. Hence, if you are looking for a water-resistant/proof phone, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active and Sony Xperia Z are the best alternatives.

Next up, the first generation Butterfly has two notification LEDs - one at the front and one at the back to the left of the camera lens. It is a truly novel implementation that is surprisingly missing on the Butterfly S. Users now have to rely only on the front notification LED located at the far right of the speaker grille.

Other than retaining the design language of the first Butterfly, HTC also draws inspiration from the likes of the One and Sensation XE with Beats Audio. The signature dual front-facing stereo speakers and the speakers rimmed with red grilles are integrated into the design of the Butterfly S.

It's not far-fetched to assert that the Butterfly S embodies the best hardware innovations from HTC at this moment, which we hope the Taiwanese phone maker will continue doing in the future as this is what differentiates its devices from the competition - especially Samsung, whose design template looks increasingly stale.

Features

The Butterfly S runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and HTC Sense 5.0. A local HTC spokesperson told us that the Android 4.2.2 update will be available for HTC One users sometime this week. According to a screenshot, the OTA update will bring the following features to the HTC One which are already present on the Butterfly S:

• Launcher bar enhancement
• Widget panel rearrangement 
• New lock screen style and widget
• Enhanced behavior of the home button 
• Options added to make navigation menu bar removable
• Show battery level in status bar 
• Quick Settings panel where there are 12 default settings
• AE / AF lock feature: Lock Exposure  / Focus on viewfinder screen 

We will explore some of the new features below:

New Lock Screen Style and Widget

Lock screen widgets is a dominant feature of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean where you can place one widget on each lock screen panel, and up to a maximum of five lock screen panels.

The implementation is different on the Butterfly S; HTC only allows you to add one widget to one lock screen panel. In addition,  you are limited to adding Google stock widgets such as Gmail and Google Now. On the other hand, Nexus devices running Android 4.2.2 can add third-party lock screen widgets such as RunKeeper and Dictionary.com.

To enable lock screen widget on the Butterfly S, you have to go to Settings > Personalize > Lock Screen Style > Widget. To choose what widget to place on the lock screen, you have to click on Settings on the same page. This process is different on Nexus devices; you only need to swipe right on the lock screen to add the widget.

Battery Level in Status Bar 

HTC finally adds a minor yet long overdue feature to the status bar - the battery level indicator. Samsung has implemented a similar option on most of its mobile devices for some time already, and it's nice to see HTC catching up. Previously, users have to download third-party apps such as Power Toggles to have a battery level indicator.

Quick Settings Panel 

By default, the Butterfly S has twelve quick settings to toggle with. It can be accessed either with a two-finger swipe down on any home screen (including the lock screen) or a swipe down followed by a tap on the Quick Settings icon on the top right corner of the screen.

Several toggles such as brightness control, power saver mode and Wi-Fi hotspot allow you to access a deeper level of settings, which can be identified via the three dots on the bottom right corner of each icon.

BlinkFeed Updates

BlinkFeed, a key feature of HTC Sense 5, now allows you to integrate the feed from your Instagram and WeChat onto the home screen of the Butterfly S. If you are unfamilar with how BlinkFeed works, do check out our detailed write-up over here.

DayDream

A screen saver-like feature, DayDream allows you to display colors on the HTC Butterfly S. By default, you only have one choice - Colors. We wanted to see if the Butterfly S supports other options, hence we went to download Google Currents and Flipboard. Fortunately, Currents and Flipboard also appeared as options after we downloaded and installed the apps.

Customization of Recent Apps Button

The touch screen menu button, first seen on the HTC One X, reappeared on the HTC One due to the two-button layout. The problem with the touch screen menu button is that it takes up a portion of the screen real estate and looks out of place at the bottom of the screen. HTC addressed this issue with the OTA update by allowing you to customize the function of the Recent Apps button.

Performance

The Butterfly S is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core 1.9GHz processor and 2GB RAM, which puts it on-par with the Samsung Galaxy S4. The processor clock speed is a tad faster than the HTC One, ASUS PadFone Infinity and LG Optimus G Pro.

To find out how HTC's latest offering fare against the competition, we use the Quadrant benchmark which evaluates the CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics of Android devices. In this comparison, we pit the Butterfly S against the HTC One, the Butterfly, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and ASUS PadFone Infinity.

The Butterfly S took the lead in the Quadrant benchmark from the One with a slightly higher score of 12,608. At the point of publication, the top two Quadrant scores belong to HTC although the upcoming Snapdragon 800-equipped smartphones such as the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A model will no doubt blow the current competition out of the water.

Having used the Butterfly S for a day, we found no issues with the performance of the device. It was every bit as snappy and responsive as the other Android 4.2 devices except for the Google Nexus devices.

Multimedia Performance

The Butterfly S sports a 5-inch Super LCD 3 display, a panel which is also used in the One and Butterfly models. As such, the viewing experience is no different from what we've noted in the other reviews - the display is nothing short of spectular! It provides natural and balanced images. Blacks are also sufficiently rich and dark.

The only issue we had with the screen is its sunlight legibility. Even with brightness tuned to maximum, we had slight problems viewing content on the Butterfly S under direct sunlight. AMOLED screens perform marginally better in such scenarios due to their more vibrant displays.

Audio capability is another strength of the Butterfly S. In a nutshell, the audio quality is very good - and loud. The three bands of audio frequencies, namely bass, mids and trebles, can be heard distinctly. 



Unlike the One, the Butterfly S comes with a microSD card slot that supports memory cards up to 64GB in capacity. Out of the box, the Butterfly S has about 10.43GB of available storage space for your apps and multimedia files. Aside from physical storage, the Butterfly S also comes with free 25GB Dropbox cloud storage space for two years.

Imaging Performance

The Butterfly S comes with the same suite of imaging hardware and software components such as the 4-megapixel UltraPixel camera sensor, HTC Zoe and user interface. As we've explored the imaging aspect, we will not be discussing it again in this review. A point to note is that the Butterfly S does not come with optical image stabilization unlike the HTC One.

For more information, you can check out our dedicated HTC One Camera Tested article where we explain the significance of the technologies behind UltraPixel and how it fares against the other camera phones under actual usage scenarios.

*Update on 11/7/2013

We were curious to see if there is a significant drop in image quality between the two Butterfly models. From our observations, it seems that the Butterfly is able to capture more saturated colors compared to the Butterfly S, as evident in the color tone of the "ABSOLUT CITRON" brand and the grapes at the bottom left corner.

Updated on 10th July, 12pm: All content from this point forward was newly added to the review - this includes the battery performance assessment and the conclusion.

Battery Mileage

Our standard battery test for mobile phones includes the following parameters:

• Looping a 800 x 480-pixel video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
  
   
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
  
   
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The Butterfly S clocked a battery uptime of 8 hours 18 minutes, which is by far the best we've seen from a HTC device. For comparison's sake, it outlasted the HTC One by four hours and the ASUS PadFone Infinity by more than an hour. This comes as no surprise since the Butterfly S packs the largest battery capacity ever seen in a HTC phone.

You must be wondering why the Butterfly S could not match up to the mileage clocked by the Samsung Galaxy S4, which has a smaller battery capacity yet could last two hours longer. Based on the Power Consumption chart, the Butterfly S has the second highest power consumption at 1.47W compared to the Galaxy S4 that's just at 0.92W. The higher power consumption of the Butterfly S could also be due to BlinkFeed running in the background and the different screen type used.

In the Portability Index where each device is assessed on its ability to balance battery mileage. with its size and portability, the Butterfly S did not perform well as it is the heaviest and thickest among the phones compared.

*Updated on 11/7/2013

To give you a more realistic understanding on how the Butterfly S fared under real world usage conditions, we included screenshots of the usage and history graphs which are available on Android 4.0 and later devices.

As seen from the graphs above, the Butterfly S could last slightly more than a day of usage. Some notes:-

• The device logged onto a 3G network as the SIM card used does not support 4G LTE.
• In addition, the device was not connected to Wi-Fi at all.
• Power saver mode was not enabled throughout the day until the battery hit the 14% mark when the phone automatically activated it.

The typical usage scenarios include making some voice calls, texting via WhatsApp, taking some photos and sharing them on social networking sites (Facebook and Instagram) and the occasional web browsing via Pulse News Reader. Since the Butterfly S comes with a 3,200mAh battery, charging the device from 0% to full is estimated to take about 3 hours using the HTC charger rated at 1A.

Conclusion - A Superior One?

As we come to the end of the review, let's answer some of the questions that we posted earlier in the review.

It's clear how HTC segregates the One and Butterfly S models. The HTC One is clearly the flagship and hero device for the company while the Butterfly S is positioned as a high-end model. Each device is distinctly designed although certain features and hardware are shared.

We believe the company's rationale for doing so is to offer a choice for consumers. An anodized aluminium chassis may not be everyone's favorite, hence the Butterfly S comes in as a viable alternative. 

On paper, the Butterfly S boasts a better set of specs than the One. which include a microSD card slot, a bigger battery capacity and 0.3-inch more screen real estate. Do these equate to a better phone? Well, it depends on what you really want.

• If 32GB of storage space is sufficient for your needs, the omission of a memory card slot on the HTC One shouldn't be a deal breaker. Are you willing to sacrifice portability in exchange for longer battery life? For people who need the extra juice, the Butterfly S is definitely a better deal.
  
   
• Is 0.3-inch extra screen real estate that important? For the average consumer, a larger display will generally mean that he or she has to stretch the finger a tad further to reach to the far corners of the screen to tap on something. If you fall into this group of consumers who prioritize usability over other factors, we recommend that you try both phones out before making a decision. On a side note, also consider the power button placement on the crown of the Butterfly S as it may pose difficulties for some people.
  
   
• A smaller but lesser talked about aspect is the row of capacitive touch buttons below the screen where the Butterfly S uses the standard 3-button layout unlike HTC's One that dumbs it down to a not-so-practical 2-button layout.

Looking purely at the performance and battery benchmarks, it is safe to assume that the Butterfly S is a better phone than the One. However, mainstream consumers on the street may not be looking purely at performance; Aesthetics, build quality and usability are also factors that they would consider. If the latter set of pointers are more important for you, the HTC One might a slightly better choice.

A burning question among many readers would be if it can be recommended over the Samsung Galaxy S4. However from our analysis, we would place them about on par as the Samsung brings with it other software features that may or may not appeal to you, but it has a better imaging component and it has a better battery life. Suffice to say, HTC has created a very convincing device with the Butterfly S and it gets a lot of practical requirements right for those looking out for a good 5-inch smartphone.

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