Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturer HTC has unveiled its latest smartphone exclusively for the Japanese market.

Surprisingly though, HTC's newest handset, the J Butterfly, sports slightly better specs than its current flagship smartphone -- the One M9.

The J Butterfly is currently listed on HTC Japan's official website as well as on mobile carrier KDDI's site. Although there are no pricing and launch date details yet regarding the device, the J Butterfly is expected to debut in Japan in summer, according to NDTV.

As to the possibility of seeing the device in other regions, various sources speculated that HTC might release and market it to other countries as the Butterfly 3, making it the latest member of the company's Butterfly line of devices.

Like the One M9, the J Butterfly also runs on the Android 5.0 Lollipop OS and is powered by the same 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 810 from Qualcomm. However, the latter sports a bigger display at 5.2-inches and its Quad HD Super LCD3 screen has a resolution of 1440x2560 pixels.

Although both devices have a built-in storage of 32GB, the internal memory of the J Butterfly can go up to 200GB through a microSD card. The One M9, on the other hand, has a maximum storage of 128GB.

In addition, the J Butterfly's rear camera is a 20.2-megapixel shooter. This is paired with a 13-megapixel front camera.

Despite the J Butterfly's casing being made out of plastic, the device is dust and water resistant. When it debuts, the smartphone will be available in white, red and blue color variants.

It's a bit surprising that HTC decided to equip the J Butterfly with better specs than its 2015 flagship smartphone. As noted by Android Authority, the tech firm has been criticized for its decision to skip premium features for the One M9 such as the Quad HD display.

Although this can be considered as a questionable move by the company, only HTC can explain its decisions regarding the specs of its products.