Taiwanese handset maker, HTC on Tuesday launched its super-smartphone – the Butterfly – in India for a whopping price of Rs 45,990 making it the costliest Android ever. The HTC Butterfly comes with a befitting feature combo that includes a 1.5 GHz quad core processor, 2 GB RAM, Android Jelly Bean etc.
But as one of my colleague said: Why one wouldn’t buy the iPhone 5? 
This is a pertinent question as the latest Apple iPhone too comes with a mind-boggling feature set. In fact, during its review, I was also got bewitched by the sheer beauty and performance of the iPhone 5.
So, let’s find out which one is the baap of smartphones.
Body:
As I had pointed out during the review also, the iPhone 5 is a brick minus the weight. The Apple iPhone 5 has the simplicity and the elegance. It weighs 112 grams and is just 0.3 inch thick. The body of the iPhone 5 is made of aluminum and glass combination which is strong as well as good looking, let alone giving you the plasticky feeling that is becoming synonymous with the Android smartphones.
On the other hand, the HTC Butterfly too is 0.3 mm thick but is a bit overweight with 140 grams of weight. The smartphone has been designed differently than its predecessors and looks tall and thick.
Display:
The HTC Butterfly comes with a 5 inch LCD display with full HD (1920×1080) pixel resolution. This means it has 440 pixel per inch density against 326 ppi Pixel density of Apple iPhone 5. Also, iPhone 5 has a smaller 4 inch display.
The HTC Butterfly comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 2 which is also known to provide protection against scratches and bumps.
Camera:
The HTC Butterfly has an 8 Megapixel rear camera with auto focus, LED flash, and BSI sensor which ensures better pictures even in low-lights. This camera can record full high definition (1080p) resolution. Also, you can capture 6 megapixel pictures simultaneously while capturing HD videos. Like its predecessors, the HTC Butterfly comes with one press continuous shooting and features like slow motion video capture and playback ability.
The HTC smartphone has also a 2.1 megapixel front camera for high definition video chatting.
The Apple iPhone 5 is no walkover in this arena either. It comes with an 8 megapixel Autofocus rear camera with LED flash. It can capture HD video and images simultaneously and has features like touch focus, geo-tagging, face detection, panorama, and high definition recording. There is a 1.2 megapixel camera in the front which too can capture video at 720p at 30 frames per second.
We were however not satisfied with its auto focus capability.
However, please remember that iPhone 5 has been hailed worldover for its camera capability and has been rated above than Samsung Galaxy SIII and even above the Nokia Lumia 920. So here, more tests are need to be conducted and the winner cannot be merely said by looking at the specification sheet.
Battery:
The HTC Butterfly comes with a 2020 mAh Li-Polymer battery against iPhone 5’s 1440 mAh Li-Po battery. The Apple iPhone 5, which officially provides 8 hours of talktime on 3G network, had impressed us with its long battery life. So from the Butterfly, we expect an equal or even a better performance as it has a bigger battery.
Storage:
The HTC Butterfly comes with 16 GB of Internal Memory along with the expandable storage slot for upto 32 GB.
The Apple iPhone 5 does not have any micro SD card slot. It does come with 32 GB and 64 GB variants but here we have considered the 16 GB version of the iPhone 5 which costs Rs 45,500 in India. In this model, you will get less than 16 GB for storage without any option to expand the memory.
Connectivity:
The iPhone 5 comes with WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth v4.0 and a USB 2.0 port. Though this sounds sufficient but considering its huge price of Rs 45,000 and above, one would expect an HDMI port too. Notably, Apple has promised to release an HDMI cable for the iPhone 5 soon, but that means users will have to spend further.
The HTC Butterfly has Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi (b/g/n), micro-USB 2.0, and DLNA. The USB 2.0 can be used for HDMI connection though a special cable as in the case with iPhone 5.
Processor and performance:
The HTC Butterfly is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 mobile processor running at 1.5 GHz along with Adreno 320 graphics chip. To power it up, HTC has chosen Google Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system and the HTC Sense 4+ user interface. It has also 2 GB of RAM.
The Apple iPhone 5 has a dual core processor with a clock speed of 1.2 GHz. It has also 1 GB of RAM. However, the Apple smartphone has PowerVR SGX 543MP3 (triple-core graphics) chip.
The Apple iPhone 5’s processor also scored low on Geekbench’s benchmark and was regarded slower than the Samsung Galaxy SIII.
Conclusion:
The HTC Butterfly obviously has its advantages like better processor, powerful RAM, bigger screen, bigger battery, and more storage slot. Also, not to forget that it has been launched for Rs 45,990 only so its retail price may drop below Rs 45,000 soon.
The Apple iPhone 5, despite its above disadvantages, will not likely to be sold in India less than its current price of Rs 45,500 (16 GB) in near future.