The latest model in HTC’s flagship Butterfly line of Android smartphones is now official, and it’s a pretty nice little handset.
The HTC J Butterfly (HTV31), also known as the HTC Butterfly 3, was introduced today as part of Japanese carrier au by KDDI’s summer 2015 lineup. Like past Butterfly phones, the new J Butterfly has a polycarbonate back that may not be quite as premium as the One M9, but is waterproof. And though the new Butterfly’s body materials may not be quite as premium as the One M9, its spec sheet sure is.
The new J Butterfly boasts a 5.2-inch 2560x1440 Super LCD3 display, 13-megapixel front-facing camera, and some stealthy BoomSound front-facing speakers. The back of the Butterfly houses a Duo Camera setup with a 20.2-megapixel main camera and a secondary depth-sensing shooter.
Inside this new J Butterfly lives an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a microSD card slot, NFC, an IR blaster, and 4G LTE connectivity. The whole package is powered by a 2700mAh battery. Rounding out the Butterfly’s feature set is Android 5.0 running beneath HTC’s Sense 7 user interface.
The HTC J Butterfly (HTV31) will launch on au by KDDI in early June. Overall it looks like a pretty nice handset that I’m betting some folks would take over the flagship One M9. While the new J Butterfly may have a plastic body, it looks well-constructed, and the logo-less front of the phone is clean. Perhaps the one big flaw here is that the Butterfly has a battery that’s slightly smaller than the One M9’s 2840mAh juice pack, but HTC does tout that the Butterfly has a Quick Charge feature, so you could get it some power in a hurry if its battery starts to run low.