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Despite saying that it won't announce the successor to the Galaxy S II (which we all assume will be called Galaxy S III) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, that doesn't mean that Samsung will show up there empty handed.
In fact, it looks like the Korean company will unveil a smartphone over there, and it will be the Galaxy S II Plus we first heard about yesterday. That phone popped up in a benchmark revealing that its processor clock has been bumped to 1.5 GHz (up from 1.2 in the Galaxy S II). And now we have its leaked press photo to look at:
The photo comes courtesy of (in)famous Russian journalist Eldar Murtazin. Being asked if this was the Galaxy S III or the Galaxy S II Plus, he confirmed it was the latter. And that it will be unveiled in Barcelona.
Aside from the bump in processor speed, the Galaxy S II Plus seems to have another trick up its sleeve: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. As you can see in the picture, the phone's Android menu buttons are now all capacitive and closely mimic the styling of the on-screen buttons seen in Android 4.0 on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. You can also see a round folder on the homescreen, something that has only been introduced in version 4.0 of Google's OS.
It's unclear why the Galaxy S II Plus that showed up in the benchmark yesterday appeared to be running Android 2.3 Gingerbread – perhaps it was just an older test unit that wasn't upgraded to the shipping version of the OS.
