Earlier today, less than six hours ago in fact, we filed a report saying that Samsung was going to announce a device at Mobile World Congress later this month called the Galaxy S II Plus. Now, thanks a tweet from Eldar Murtazin, Editor in Chief of Mobile-Review, we now know what that device looks like. As you can see from the image below it’s pretty much the Galaxy S II we all know and love, except that Ice Cream Sandwich’s onscreen buttons are no longer on the screen, they’re instead capacitive buttons where you’d expect them to be on any Android smartphone. We can’t say for certain what the exact specifications are of the Galaxy S II Plus, but from the data we have available to us we think it has an 800 x 480 pixel resolution screen, 1.5 GHz dual core processor, and that’s about it. No idea on the camera for you shutter bugs out there.
Some of you may be asking yourself what the hell Samsung is up to? Yesterday they announced that they’re not going to bring the Galaxy S III to Mobile World Congress, instead they’ll host their own even later in the year to do that, and now an image of this thing pops up? Samsung’s made more than enough Galaxy S II units that they likely found a way to make them for less money. That’ll be where this thing can potentially be a runaway success. Also, they can advertise that the Galaxy S II Plus runs Ice Cream Sandwich. Assuming it lands on store shelves shortly after being announced, that’s an incredibly compelling selling point since the only other device on the market that runs ICS is the Galaxy Nexus, which again, is made by Samsung. Talk about a win-win situation!
@WhatTheBit second one…
— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) February 2, 2012
What do you think: Does something like the Galaxy S II Plus sound perfect for you since it’ll offer the best of last year’s technology with the latest in Google’s software? It can’t cost more than 500 EUR, so who knows how crazy expensive the Galaxy S III will be!
Update: Could the Exynos 4212 be at the heart of this thing?