HTC Butterfly S review: Evolution complete

Introduction

The first Butterfly was somewhat of a wasted opportunity for HTC, the limited reach and high asking price preventing the 5" 1080p monster from becoming a global winner. Back then the company was merely trying to build up hype ahead of the launch of the HTC One and, had the Butterfly not been plagued by production issues, the strategy might have worked splendidly. Instead, the Taiwanese ended up losing sales to Sony, who delivered the Xperia Z ahead of the One, and Samsung who handled the Galaxy S4's supply and marketing better.

What we can't quite figure out is why HTC is sticking to the same plan with the Butterfly S. The second-gen five-incher by HTC comes with an even more capable chipset, the new UltraPixel camera and a massive 3200 mAh battery that should keep it on for quite a while.

   
HTC Butterfly S official photos

That seems like a winning combo to us and, even with the One Max just around the corner, we don't see why HTC isn't planning to offer it on as many markets as possible. The target audiences of the Butterfly S and the One Max are quite different really, so it's unlikely that one will eat into the sales of the other.

Anyway, we are not gathered here to guess whether HTC strategists know what they are doing. We are more interested in how the engineers have done with the Butterfly S. But before we dive in, here's the best and the worst about the smartphone.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support; 3G with HSPA; LTE
• 5" 16M-color 1080p Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen with 441ppi pixel density
• Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
• Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Sense UI 5.0
• Quad-core 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU, 2 GB RAM, Adreno 320 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset
• 4 MP autofocus "UltraPixel" camera with 1/3" sensor size, 2µm pixel size; LED flash
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps with HDR mode, continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• HTC Zoe
• 2.1 MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA; Wireless TV out
• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
• 16GB of built-in storage, microSD card slot
• MHL-enabled microUSB port
• Bluetooth v4.0
• NFC
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
• Front-mounted stereo speakers with BoomSound tech
• Class-leading audio output
• Ample 3,200 mAh battery

Main disadvantages

• 4MP camera has disappointing performance in good lighting conditions
• No optical image stabilization
• Awkwardly-placed and uncomfortable power button
• Non user-replaceable battery
• Poor video and audio codec support out of box
• Questionable build quality - paint chips off easily

The HTC Butterfly S is obviously a very hot prospect and it can easily outdo its far more popular One sibling in all but two aspects - premium styling and camera. The large "ultrapixels" are there, but as we found out when we reviewed the One mini optical image stabilization is an essential part of the equation. And while the glossy plastic of the Butterfly S certainly catches the eye, it's no match for the aluminum unibody of the One.

  
HTC Butterfly S in our studio

When you turn to productivity, however, the HTC Butterfly S is certainly the best smartphone HTC has produced so far. We already know how good the 5" 1080p screen is and with a Snapdragon 600 chipset under the hood, it's a package that can do wonders. Add a huge battery, which is closer in capacity to the HTC Flyer tablet than the HTC One, and the expandable storage, and you get a multimedia monster and business tool combo that's hard to match.

Oppo R819 review: Asian blade

Introduction

Dual-SIM phones have an aura of budget-mindedness, which makes it hard to find a handset that goes the extra mile. The Oppo R819 has an impressively slim and light build, a good screen and camera, and operates in the busy but somewhat uninspiring dual-SIM midrange.

   
Oppo R819 official images

The R819 is only 7.3mm thick and weighs a meager 110g, which gives it an in-hand feel that's impressive in any price range. The positive impressions continue with the bright, sharp screen. 720p on a 4.7" diagonal used to be flagship specs last year.

Same goes for the camera - the 8MP BSI image sensor sits behind a 5-element F/2.0 aperture lens and can shoot 1080p video. The Mediatek MT6589 chipset is becoming quite popular and while it won't scare the high-end Snapdragons, it should offer good enough performance and solid battery life. Plus it's coupled with a very recent Android build - 4.2 Jelly Bean - so it should go quite smoothly.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with HSPA
• 4.7" 16M-color 720p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 312ppi pixel density
• Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean with custom UI; Optional stock Android
• Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, 1 GB RAM, PowerVR SGX544 GPU; Mediatek MT6589 chipset
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging, HDR
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps, continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• 2 MP front-facing camera with 88° FoV, 1080p video recording
• Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA; Wireless TV out
• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
• 16GB of built-in storage
• microUSB port
• Bluetooth v3.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; Dirac HD sound enhancement
• Voice dialing
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
• 2,000mAh battery

Main disadvantage

• Relatively weak chipset
• No microSD card slot
• No LTE
• No NFC
• No TV-out
• Non user-replaceable battery

The biggest omissions that can trip up the R819 on its way to your pocket are all connectivity features. The sealed battery and non-expandable storage are to be expected in a slim phone, even more so considering phone makers are keener than ever on locking up both storage and battery.

There are legitimate uses of multiple SIM cards, even in the day and age of "unlimited everything" plans. Those plans are pricy for one - an extra card can give you data or texts a lot cheaper. Or travelling abroad you might want to keep your SIM active for emergencies, but put in a local pre-paid card for most calls. Or keep the work phone card on you during weekends, without carrying a second handset.

   
Oppo R819 in our office

The Oppo R819 has all the right things on its CV, but let's see how it does in an extended interview - jump over to the next page to see if it lived up to the expectations set up by the Find 5.

HTC Desire 600 dual sim review: One in two

Introduction

With dual SIM still more or less a niche feature and considering the Desire line has been sliding down the ranks and losing value, people will have more than enough reasons to give the HTC Desire 600 dual sim the cold shoulder. Will it be deserved? Well, at least on paper, this phone may be worth of the benefit of the doubt.

It's not a name that has a sexy ring to it but the HTC Desire 600 dual sim has the right genes, being a direct descendant of the One. More often than not dual-SIM designs lack inspiration, being a replica of existing devices with an added SIM card slot. This, fortunately, is not the case with the HTC Desire 600.

   
HTC Desire 600 dual sim official photos

Of course, an extra SIM slot often involves compromise elsewhere -the HTC Desire 600 had to settle for the Snapdragon 200 chipset with four Cortex-A5 cores running at 1.2GHz and 1GB of RAM. This is Qualcomm's baseline product for 2013. We can't wait to see how it performs with Sense UI, but we'll get to that a bit later on.

For now, here's a quick rundown of the smartphone's key strengths and most notable weaknesses.

Key features

• GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 - SIM 1 & SIM 2, HSDPA 900 / 2100 SIM 1
• 4.5" 540 x 960 pixel Super LCD2 capacitive touchscreen with 245ppi
• Android OS v4.1.2 Jelly Bean with Sense UI 5.0
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset: quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A5, 1 GB RAM, Adreno 203 GPU
• 8 MP autofocus camera with 1/3.2'' sensor size, 2µm pixel size; LED flash
• 720p video recording @ 30fps with HDR mode and stereo audio, slow-mo 720p@60fps video,
• 1.6MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA; Wireless TV-out
• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
• 8GB of built-in storage
• microSD card slot
• Bluetooth v4.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
• Front-mounted stereo speakers with BoomSound tech
• FM Radio

Main disadvantages

• Relatively slow chipset
• Disappointing stills and video, no Full HD video recording
• Poor video codec support out of the box
• No 3G support on the secondary SIM card

Perhaps a 720p screen and 1080p videos would've been too much for the entry-level Snapdragon 200 chipset to handle. Other than that though, HTC has really tried to maximize the feature set of the HTC Desire 600 dual sim. The front-facing BoomSound speakers promise flagship-grade audio quality and, unlike the One and One mini, the Desire 600 offers a microSD card slot and a removable battery. The Desire 600 dual sim is still pleasantly thin at 9.2mm.

 
HTC Desire 600 dual sim live photos

Now that we've caught a glimpse of the pros and cons of the Desire 600 dual sim, let's see how it fares in real life. We're back right after the break with a full physical.

Huawei Ascend P6 review: Zen droid slim

Introduction

The razor-slim Huawei Ascend P6 has snatched the slimmest smartphone title right under the nose of the big guns. The China-based maker is not only keeping up with its high-profile competitors in terms of both hardware and software, but has achieved what few others have lately. The Ascend P6 offers a well-balanced feature set in a beautifully designed body, record-breaking thin at that.

   
Huawei Ascend P6 official pictures

The Huawei Ascend P6 was introduced in June and is now officially hitting the shelves with its record still intact. The Ascend P6's signature feature is the phone's 6.2mm profile, edging ahead of even the impressively slim Sony Xperia Z Ultra.

Sure, there has been word of even thinner phones like the Vivo X3(5.6mm) and the Umeox X5 (5.6mm), but they're the kind of gadgets to give small-time Chinese makers their 15 minutes of fame rather than make a big splash globally. Huawei's vision, on the other hand, goes well beyond the home market - though what a market that is!

The Ascend P6 is powered by the company's home-brewed chipset - the K3V2 - featuring a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 processor, a 16-core GPU and 2GB of RAM. Having already seen this configuration on the Ascend Mate phablet, we can confirm that it's a more than adequate match for the 720p screen.

Here is the full breakdown of the Huawei Ascend P6.

Key features

• Ultra-slim 6.2mm profile
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; penta-band 3G with HSPA
• 4.7" 16M-color 720p IPS+ LCD capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, usable with gloves
• Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Emotion UI
• Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A9, 16-core GPU; 2GB of RAM; Huawei K3V2 chipset
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording @ 30fps
• 5 MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording
• Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS
• 8GB of built-in storage
• microSD card slot, side-mounted, hot-swap
• microUSB port with USB host, USB OTG
• Bluetooth v3.0
• FM radio
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

Main disadvantages

• Non-exchangeable battery
• No LTE or NFC support
• Video recording could be better
• Disappointing audio output

As you can see, there is very little the Ascend P6 fails to deliver. Some may find the non-removable battery unacceptable, but lots of manufacturers these days are resorting to a similar design in order to keep their phones beautifully slim, yet sturdy enough.

For NFC and LTE, there's the Huawei Ascend P2, which was introduced early on in Barcelona. Actually, the jump from P2 to P6 is not to be construed as a massive improvement in terms of level of equipment. The two handsets are more like alternative versions for those with different design preferences. What's more important is that with the Ascend P series Huawei's looking quite solid in the upper midrange.

  
Huawei Ascend P6 live pictures

Anyway, let's cut to the chase. Follow us on the next page where the Ascend P6 is given a thorough hardware inspection.

HTC One mini vs Samsung Galaxy S4 mini: Young guns

Introduction

Yes, you can call it Round 2 but we don't think it'll be up to the minis to sort out any unfinished business between the flagships. What we do know though is that taking the dispute to the junior league doesn't mean there'll be less pain in losing and less honor in victory.

This doesn't have to be a rerun - the minis don't necessarily have to repeat the result of the flagships. Just like smartphones don't necessarily have to be huge to have premium specs and push the limits of comfortable single-handed use to just prove a point or get noticed.

What we have here is two smartphones that try to deliver a premium experience without getting in the way of their seniors or venturing too far beyond the 4" screen diagonal. However there's a clear difference in how the two makers go about downsizing their flagships.

HTC decided in favor of screen resolution whereas Samsung skimped there. 720p is obviously better than qHD, at around 342ppi versus 256ppi in favor of the One mini. The S4 mini's 4.3-incher on the other hand is a Super AMOLED, which partially makes up for the lower resolution.

Then there's processing power where the two devices share a Snapdragon 400 chipset but the Samsung mini has the upper hand in terms of clock speed. It also gets 1.5GB of RAM against the 1GB of the One mini but more on that in the benchmarks chapter.

   
HTC One mini and Samsung Galaxy S4 mini

The S4 mini goes for 8 gigs of onboard storage but offers a microSD card slot, while the One mini only has 16 gigs on tap. As to software, it's Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 either way but the One mini has the elaborate visuals of Sense 5 against the feature-packed TouchWiz on the Galaxy S4 mini.

The cameras are opposites too. The Galaxy S4 mini goes for an 8MP unit with plenty of TouchWiz bells and whistles, while the One mini has the 4MP UltraPixel camera with 2µm pixels, F/2.0 aperture and a wide-angle 28 mm lens. The HTC One mini has Zoe but not the optical image stabilization of its bigger brother, the full-sized One. Both devices have 1080p video recording too.

Then there's build quality and looks. Both devices traditionally reflect their manufacturer's design philosophies: the One mini looks the flagship part with its aluminum unibody, while the S4 mini goes for a hyperglazed all-plastic case, which is nowhere near aesthetically, but a user-replaceable battery and memory expansion earn it usability points.

Here are all the points neatly compiled in lists.

HTC One mini over Samsung Galaxy S4 mini

• Aluminum unibody
• Higher screen resolution
• HDR and 60fps video
• More built-in storage
• Better audio quality
• Stereo speakers with Beats audio amplifiers

Samsung Galaxy S4 mini over the HTC One mini

• Faster processor
• Higher resolution camera
• Expandable storage
• More RAM
• Cheaper
• User-accessible battery
• NFC support
• Lighter

So, there's enough to compare in these two but one thing that sees them equal is the desire to fit as much of the flagships' features into more compact bodies at more affordable prices. And we love them for it. But we'll need to sort them out feature by feature, break them down to parts and pit them against each other.

   
The HTC One mini and Samsung Galaxy S4 mini at HQ

It's a battle in which most of you already have a side to root for, or a downright favorite. HTC and Samsung have always managed to attract different sorts of crowds and the same scenario plays out here too. In any case we're going all in over the following pages so get comfortable - next stop is the hardware checkup.