The HTC Butterfly S is born

HTC just pulled the wraps offof its new Butterfly S smartphone. The successor to the original Butterfly handset, this model will feature a fresh infusion of hardware including a 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB of RAM, plus a big 5-inch full HD (1080p) LCD screen.

Droid DNA, HTC One cross pollinate
Other modern components you can expect to find on the Butterfly S are a set of HTC's bodacious twin stereo speakers (what the company calls BoomSound), Android (likely 4.2 Jelly Bean) with the latest Sense UI, plus a 4-megapixel "Ultrapixel" camera capable of HTC's fancy Zoe Share abilities.

If all this sounds familiar that's because many of the Butterfly S' tricks are pulled right from HTC's current flagship, the HTC One. And like the previous Butterfly, which later morphed into the HTC Droid DNA on Verizon in the U.S., the Butterfly S is extremely thin and sports a more traditional plastic chassis.

A beast of a battery
Also different from the HTC One's all-metal sealed body, the Butterfly S flaunts a microSD expansion slot for additional storage. The battery, like in past HTC phones, such as the One X, is embedded. Interestingly that battery pack boasts a fat 3,200mAh capacity. By comparison, the HTC One comes with a much smaller 2,300mAh battery.

Indeed, long battery life might be this gadget's ace in the hole, since its battery approaches the capacity of the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx's legendary 3,300mAh power source. One downer is that the Butterfly S doesn't support 4G LTE, or at least the global GSM model HTC announced won't.

Outlook
I bet that we'll likely see a Verizon Droid version with 4G LTE hit the U.S. in a few months, perhaps as soon as September or as late as November when the first Droid DNA launched last year. Be sure to check back soon for more developments.