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The HTC Butterfly has now been officially released in the Philippines, with a retail price of Php30,990.    The HTC Butterfly comes equipped with a 5-inch 1080p display (1080 x 1920), making it the second 1080p phone to hit Philippine shores, Inside you have the same Qualcomm S4 Pro chipset and 2 GB of RAM which powers the Google Nexus 4. The phone comes with Android 4.1 out of the box, but it is upgradeable to Googles latest and greatest Android 4.2.

Update: Everything sounds good, except for one thing, the Philippine version apparently does not have LTE enabled.  

As for the other specifications, the HTC Butterfly comes with the same 8MP camera used in the high end 2012 HTC phones, and comes with a 2.1 MP front camera. HTC has gone back to providing expandable storage in their phones, and this one comes with 16 GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot, so there should be no complaints there.

The Butterfly is actually a late 2012 model which has been on sale in Japan, while a similar model, the HTC Droid DNA has been on sale in the US, since late last year. The HTC Butterfly will not be the companies top of the line offering for 2013. What the HTC Butterfly is design to do is take back some serious sales number from the Samsung Galaxy S III, and even the Note II, until the next round of new Android phone released coming this summer.

Does the HTC Butterfly succeed? It does, but not completely. It is certainly the best smartphone available in the Philippine market today for those who dont care about LTE. The 5-inch displays is a "super-retina" display with 441 pixels per inch. Its like having an Full HD TV in your hand. Still many might not notice the difference between this and 4.7 or 4.8-inch phones with 720p displays.

Despite the large, high resolution screen, the battery life matches the Samsung Galaxy S III. It has enough power to make it relevant for the next two years or so you would normally keep a smartphone. The LTE tech inside, makes sure it wont feel obsolete anytime soon.

Still the Samsung Galaxy S III still has some advantages. The Samsung Galaxy S III still has a better camera. The Samsung Galaxy S III has a user replaceable battery. Finally, the Samsung Galaxy S IIIs price has gone steadily over the past 9 months since its release, down to just a bit over 25K.

LTE would have made the HTC Butterfly a clear winner. Without LTE, the HTC Butterfly, like the Samsung Galaxy S III will feel obsolete in a matter of a few months. Hold on to what you got, or buy something cheap in the interim.