SAN FRANCISCO — Parrot's latest flagship drone is faster, lighter and has more than twice as much flight time as the previous model.

Parrot CEO Henri Seydoux showed off the new Bebop 2 drone during a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday. A followup to last year's Bebop, he said the Bebop 2 is the company's most-advanced drone yet.

The Bebop 2 will be available beginning Dec. 14 for $549.99. It is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, which pilots use to control the drone and view a live feed from the Bebop 2's fisheye camera. There's also an optional Skycontroller, which is available for an additional $250.

With 25 minutes of flying time, Parrot has doubled the amount of air-time for pilots. (The first generation Bebop only got 11 minutes of flight time per charge, which was one of our biggest complaints about the device.) The drone is also faster than last year's model, topping out at 37 mph when moving horizontally and 13 mph when moving vertically.

Parrot's new $549.99 Bebop 2 drone gets 25 minutes of flight time, does automatic selfies; on sale Dec 14 pic.twitter.com/gF9rSNdEi2 — Karissa Bell (@karissabe) November 17, 2015

The only moving parts of the drone are the propellers, Seydoux said, everything else is controlled with software, which helps make the device more efficient. He equated the technology inside the drone — with Wi-Fi receivers and a graphics processing unit (GPU) — to that of a smartphone.

"The fact that we do everything with software makes the drone lighter and stronger," he said.

The Bebop 2's camera is the same 14-megapixel fisheye camera (which also captures HD video) as last year's model, but the CEO noted the importance of the camera quality. "A drone is a flying robot but the most important feature is a camera," Seydoux said during Tuesday's event. "The drone is a flying image processing device."

The drone also has a built-in flight recorder that tracks stats like battery usage, flight time and other data about your flight. The data is uploaded to Parrot's cloud service, which drone owners can access for free.

Like the previous Bebop, the Bebop 2 will also be compatible with virtual reality headsets, like Samsung's Gear and the Oculus Rift. When flying with a headset, pilots get a first-person view of the drone's camera, along with their current altitude and speed.