HTC J Butterfly: The Phablet Trend Continues...

HTC J Butterfly

HTC has recently unveiled a new phone, the HTC J Butterfly geared towards the "phablet" crowd. With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean onboard, the HTC J Butterfly is running the newest software at the time of release. Of course, with version 4.2 looming, there are no guarantees as to when the next software update could be available. Like any other HTC device, the HTC J Butterfly has a Sense overlay.

The screen of the HTC J Butterfly is nothing short of spectacular. It features a 1080p display on a 5 inch Super LCD 2 screen. Inside the device is a 1.5Ghz Quad Core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and 2GB of RAM. There is 16GB of onboard storage available, with a microSD card slot.  On the back of the phone is an 8-megapixel camera with a f/2.0 lens and on the front is a 2 megapixel front facing camera. Powering this device is a 2,020mAh battery.

Compared to the Galaxy Note II, the J Butterfly lacks the massive battery that the Note II has. This gives us the question, is a 2,020mAh battery enough to power the 5-inch device throughout the day? The screen is wonderful, and I am sure it will attract much of the phablet crowd, but how many?

Patience for updates growing slimmer and slimmer

Source: Mobile Devices phone

How long are you willing to wait for the next version to upgrade? One month? Six months? A whole year? Android updates, as widely known as they are, take forever to update. Some phones don't even get a single update! My HTC Wildfire S, for example, has never received an update. It has been stuck on version 2.3.3 Gingerbread since I got the phone, and looking towards the future, does not seem likely to receive an update anytime soon. So what were my options? Either stick to Gingerbread, or go through the process of rooting, and install a custom ROM. I opted for the latter, but I do wish that I could have gotten an update from HTC themselves.

Even though the Wildfire S is a seemingly low-end device, there may be some justifications as to why it did not receive an update. The amount of RAM available, and the devices' internal memory is just not sufficient enough to run Ice Cream Sandwich, let alone Jelly Bean. But what about devices that have enough memory and RAM to support the next and newest update? Some are being left to dry alone, like the Motorola Atrix 4G. The Atrix 4G has 16GB of internal storage, and 1GB of RAM. It even has a dual-core 1Ghz processor. In what means is this not capable of running Ice Cream Sandwich? It is more than capable, and better specifications than the Nexus S, currently running Jelly Bean.

Jelly Bean, released back in July of 2012, is currently only running on the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S for Android phones. Now, September of 2012, updates are slowly rolling out to users with a Galaxy S3 in Poland, getting the long awaited Jelly Bean update. Two months seem like a long time, but do you think it's worth the two month rate? Do you think it could roll out quicker?

What's really at the root of this problem? Is it the skins that are running atop of stock Android? Is it missing the hardware acceleration? This problem has plagued Android, and many users are flocking to alternatives, such as the less cumbersome iPhone or Windows Phone options. Both of these devices are capable to update once the update has been pushed out. There is a minimal amount of wait, you are guaranteed an update at least once a year, until you are unsupported.

What is your opinion on this issue? How long are you willing to wait for an update?