HTC has welcomed a new smartphone to its Butterfly family, announcing the HTC Butterfly 2 at an event in Tokyo.

The new HTC Butterfly 2 comes as the successor to the original HTC Butterfly and the subsequent Butterfly S. This new model is virtually identical to Japan's recently-announced HTC J.

The smartphone will be available through carrier KDDI in Japan, as well as Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, CSL in Hong Kong, and a number of other carriers across South Asia.

"Our consumers always pursue perfection. Therefore, we chose the partner that we know will offer the best smartphones in the market," touted KDDI President Takashi Tanaka in the press release on Monday, Aug. 18. "Since the HTC J series was released, it has become the most popular phone in our product portfolio."

"HTC Butterfly 2 follows HTC's iconic design and globally acclaimed user experience," added HTC CEO Peter Chou. "Its elegant appearance and fantastic performance will certainly provide consumers with the best experience ever."

Speaking of design, the new HTC Butterfly 2 comes with a polycarbonate body and a glass front, as opposed to the more premium design of the flagship HTC One M8. Nevertheless, it packs powerful internals that will provide a good performance.

The HTC Butterfly 2 sports a 5-inch Full HD 1080p display and packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor under the hood, clocked at 2.5GHz and paired with 2GB of RAM. The handset comes in 16GB or 32GB internal storage configurations, with microSD support for additional memory of up to 128GB. Just like the flagship HTC One M8, the Butterfly 2 rocks a Duo Camera setup on its rear, but instead of an UltraPixel sensor this model has a 13-megapixel primary camera, backed up by a smaller camera at the top to allow focus on other objects in the shot. A 5-megapixel front shooter, meanwhile, will allow for quality video chats and self-shots.

A 2.700 mAh battery will keep things up and running for 23.9 hours of talktime or 643 hours of standby, and it also has a Power Saving Mode that can extend battery life up to two weeks by shutting down all non-essential apps and services.

The HTC Butterfly 2 also boasts IP57 certification, which means that it's both water and dust-resistant. In an odd move, however, HTC has apparently left the ports of the device open instead of covering them with flaps like in other IP57-certified devices out there. The company has chosen to add a "short circuit protection" to the internals, making them water resistant even if the ports are not covered with protective flaps.

Connectivity options for the HTC Butterfly 2 include LTE support (including for Indian networks), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, while Android 4.4.2 KitKat rocks the software side with HTC's Sense 6.0 UI on top. The smartphone will be available in red, white, and blue color options. The red and white models will have a glossy finish, while the blue one will be matte.

HTC announced two variants of the new Butterfly 2, one exclusively headed to the Japanese market, and the other one bound for international markets. It remains unclear at this point whether this smartphone will ever make it to U.S. shores.