HTC Butterfly 2 review: Caterpillar

The HTC Butterfly 2 has a Snapdragon 801 system on a chip doing the heavy lifting. It utilizes a quad-core Krait 400 2.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and the Adreno 330 graphics processor. With Snapdragon 805 devices already on sale, that's no longer the most powerful combo on the market, but it's still one that delivers plenty of performance. We tested the HTC Butterfly 2 for cheating in a couple of tests and can safely report no shenanigans took place.

Jumping straight into the benchmark scores we can expect around the same performance as that of the HTC One (M8) and HTC One (E8) but we've selected a few other notable devices to keep things interesting.

First off we're looking at the CPU performance. GeekBench 3 and AnTuTu 5 give the HTC Butterfly 2 the second seed just below the One (E8) but the scores, as you can see don't differ all that much.

Basemark divides the score into multiple results - we give you the overall one and the breakdown of single and multi-core performance. The core breakdown scores were good and the overall results differs little from the best in the league.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  3229
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  3175
• HTC Butterfly 2
  3065
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  3011
• Apple iPhone 6
  2924
• Sony Xperia Z3
  2860
• LG G3 - EU version
  2563
• LG Nexus 5
  2453
• HTC One (M8)
  2367
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  1837

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  46857
• HTC Butterfly 2
  45283
• HTC One (M8)
  44020
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  43164
• Sony Xperia Z3
  40393
• LG G3 - EU version
  39905

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• LG Nexus 5
  1351
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  1324
• Apple iPhone 6
  1252
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  1234
• HTC One (E8)
  1146
• HTC One (M8)
  1126
• LG G3 - EU version
  1126
• Sony Xperia Z3
  1109
• HTC Butterfly 2
  1107
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  1082

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  2579
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  2573
• HTC Butterfly 2
  2541
• HTC One (M8)
  2428
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  2415
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  2397
• LG G3 - EU version
  2213
• Sony Xperia Z3
  2114

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  10219
• HTC Butterfly 2
  10211
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  10063
• HTC One (M8)
  9860
• LG G3 - EU version
  9611
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  9508
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  8976
• Sony Xperia Z3
  8792

Next we tested the Adreno 330 GPU inside the HTC Butterfly 2. It faced Adreno-only competition here so there shouldn't be drastic differences in performance. And there aren't - the framerates in both the onscreen and offscreen GFX tests show scores on the level of other flagships and gaming benchmark Basemark X gives the Butterfly 2 a third place that's a hair behind the second-seed HTC One (M8).

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  42.6
• HTC One (M8)
  28.4
• HTC One (E8)
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  27.8
• Sony Xperia Z3
  27.7
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  27.6
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  27.4
• HTC Butterfly 2
  27.3
• LG G3 - EU version
  27.2
• LG Nexus 5
  23

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  51
• HTC One (M8)
  30.1
• HTC One (E8)
  29.9
• Sony Xperia Z3
  29.3
• HTC Butterfly 2
  29
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  28.2
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  28.2
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  28.1
• LG Nexus 5
  24
• LG G3 - EU version
  20.5

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  17.7
• HTC One (E8)
  12.3
• Sony Xperia Z3
  12
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  11.8
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  11.6
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  11.6
• HTC Butterfly 2
  11.5
• LG G3 - EU version
  11.4
• HTC One (M8)
  11.1

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  29.2
• HTC One (E8)
  12.9
• HTC Butterfly 2
  12.8
• Sony Xperia Z3
  12.7
• HTC One (M8)
  11.9
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  11.7
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  11.5
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  11.3
• LG G3 - EU version
  7.2

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  15841
• Sony Xperia Z3
  12637
• HTC One (M8)
  12396
• HTC Butterfly 2
  12302
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  11744
• LG Nexus 5
  11638
• LG G3 - EU version
  11552
• HTC One (E8)
  3063

And finally we come to browsing performance, namely JavaScript and HTML 5. These categories are dependent not only on the hardware configuration but on the software as well and manufacturers usually tend to optimize their phones for these tasks. Here the HTC Butterfly 2 didn't really earn any prizes and was seriously beaten by the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z3.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  4710
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  6043
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  6137
• Sony Xperia Z3
  6355
• HTC One (E8)
  6460
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  6586
• LG G3 - EU version
  6987
• LG Nexus 5
  7148
• HTC Butterfly 2
  9939
• HTC One (M8)
  10296

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6
  3153
• Sony Xperia Z3
  1533
• LG G3 - EU version
  1474
• Samsung Galaxy S5 (S801)
  1398
• HTC One (E8)
  1362
• LG Nexus 5
  1286
• HTC Butterfly 2
  1077
• HTC One (M8)
  1069
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  744
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  706

It's fun to watch for imperfections under the hood and comparing the best of the best on benchmark tests. But in reality you really can't buy a slow or bad smartphone anymore, in this price bracket at least. While using the HTC Butterfly 2 we didn't have skipped frames in the UI, prolonged loading of apps or webpages - everything was smooth as silk.

And while the HTC Butterfly 2 hasn't earned any prizes for best performance, a couple of points less in a benchmark or a couple of fps less in a GPU test don't mean anything in reality. The Butterfly 2 can stand up to any of its rivals and won't be humiliated.