Sony Xperia Z or HTC Butterfly: What should you buy?

Sony Xperia Z holds the advantage but only because it costs Rs 38,990 against HTC Butterfly's Rs 45,990.

When it comes to smartphones, people have their own choices and brand preferences. No matter who is the king of the kings, consumers purchase what they feel is right. Sony and HTC are two well-known and beloved brands in the market that have within a gap of one month released their flagship models in the market, and have now become strong contenders against each other.

The competition is head-to-head between HTC Butterfly that was launched on January 29 this year for Rs 45,990 and Sony Xperia Z that made it way in the Indian market on March 6 with a price tag of Rs 38,990.

Both the droids boast of some special features and latest technologies that make them win in that respective area. Both have attractive design and alluring features that have puzzled most of the buyers what option to go for. To resolve this query, we provide a small yet useful comparison between the two flagship models to take one out of the flummox.

Operating system and user interface

A very minute difference lies in the operating system of the two smartphones.

Where Sony Xperia Z runs on Android version 4.1.2 Jelly Bean platform, its rival, the HTC Butterfly, has a slightly lower version, that is, version 4.1.1 Jelly Bean OS.

Though both could be upgraded to Android version 4.2 Jelly Bean in future, for now Xperia Z has the advantage of having a superior version of the OS. So platform-wise, both score equal and thus tie on this parameter.

In terms of user interface, HTC Butterfly goes a notch higher than Xperia Z, as the Sense UI version 4+ with which this smartphone is blessed, makes it stand out in the numbers game, whereas the user interface of Sony Xperia Z is non-customisable. While the notification area can be accessed from the lockscreen in HTC Butterfly, this feature is unavailable in Sony Xperia Z.

In fact, the lockscreen can be customised as per one's need in HTC Butterfly, albeit the same is animated in Sony Xperia Z.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Screen and display

Both HTC Butterfly and Sony Xperia Z have same display size with similar screen resolutions. Each one of them has a 5-inch diagonally wide display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, but in terms of pixel density, Sony Xperia Z is heavier than that of HTC Butterfly as the former enjoys a pixel density of 443ppi whereas it is only 441ppi in the latter.

This is one side of the coin; on the other side, HTC Butterfly has Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen in comparison to the TFT display of Xperia Z.

Another major difference between the two resides on the screen protection part: the display of HTC Butterfly is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2 whereas Xperia Z's display has a protection of shatter-proof and scratch-resistant glass of an unknown brand.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Camera

In this department, Sony Xperia Z is a sureshot winner with its elephantine 13.1 megapixels primary snapper with autofocus and LED flash support with burst mode, 16x digital zoom, HDR image and video, face detection, geo-tagging, image/video stabilisation and lot more.

There is also a secondary 2.2 megapixels front shooter to support chat over videos and with this, one can also record 1080p videos.

While HTC Butterfly has an 8 megapixels camera BSI sensor backed by supports such as autofocus, LED flash, smart flash, sightseeing mode, video stabilisation, slow motion video capturing, continuous shooting, face detection, smile detection and VideoPic that allows one to capture 6 megapixel photo while shooting an HD video at the same time.

To enable video calls, this flagship HTC phone has 2.1 megapixels secondary camera.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Build quality

Here too, Sony Xperia Z is ahead of HTC Butterfly with its water-proof and dust-resistant body for which it is IP57 certified. HTC Butterfly does not have any protection against water and dust. Both the droids have non-removable back panel, which means that in both the handsets users do not have access to the battery.

In terms of size and weight, the two have very minor difference: Sony Xperia Z holds a thinner structure with 139mm x 71mm x 7.9mm dimension in comparison to 143mm x 70.5mm x 9.1mm figure size of HTC Butterfly, but the latter is lighter than the former with a weight of 140 grams against 146 grams weight of Xperia Z.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Processors and memory

Sony Xperia Z and HTC Butterfly, both draw their power from a quad-core 1.5GHz Krait processors backed by Snapdragon Pro chipset. The graphical processors used in the two are also same, that is, Aderno 320.

On the memory part also both have the same 2GB RAM integrated with 16GB of internal memory. The only difference lies in the support to external memory where Xperia Z's external memory could be expanded up to 64GB, HTC Butterfly can afford expansion up to 32GB only.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Multimedia

Sony products are well known for their music and video quality and same is the case here. Sony Xperia Z provides support to n number of audio and video formats that double up your multimedia experience with the smartphone.

HTC Butterfly supports number of formats but their number is less in comparison to Xperia Z.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Battery

Sony Xperia Z holds a powerful 2,330mAh battery that delivers a life time of up to 11 hours upon calls and a standby time of up to 550 hours.

A continuous music play of up to 40 hours is also supported. When it comes to HTC Butterfly, there is a little disappointment as a 2,020mAh won't be able to keep the droid alive for long hours with such a huge bundle of heavy applications and games.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.

Price

Until now there is a neck-and-neck competition between Xperia Z and Butterfly and both are proving themselves better than the other in one area or so, but when it comes to price, the flagship droid by Sony wins the race with a price of Rs 38,990 over HTC Butterfly that is available for Rs 45,990.

This wide difference in the rate would surely give advantage to Sony Xperia Z that holds almost similar specs and features as that what HTC Butterfly provides.

Reader Invite

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.