Samsung Galaxy S II Plus Surfaces, Possible 2012 Landing

Amid the thrill of Samsung's latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, it appears the manufacturer has another Galaxy model in the works, only this device will be more comparable to last year's second generation Galaxy S, according to recent reports.

Known as the Galaxy S II Plus, this smartphone made its first appearance a while back when some leaked benchmarks surfaced. Now, thanks to a new report flaunting images of the device, the world has a better idea of what this souped-up Galaxy S II will offer.

According to the report, the Galaxy S II Plus will sport a 4.5-inch AMOLED display and is going to be powered by Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). With a styling similar to the T-Mobile version of the Samsung Galaxy S II featuring a lip at the back and a center-sitting 8-megapixel camera with single LED flash, the Galaxy S II Plus will apparently house a set of four capacitive buttons on its front, a rather old-school characteristic for smartphones these days. On the right of the device will be a power button, while the left is home to a volume bar, and there will indeed be cameras on both sides, as far as the pictures show.

Reported to ship with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, the smartphone will pack a 1.5GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos CPU, which falls flat when compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor inside Sammy's third-generation Galaxy S.

With reports of the Galaxy S II Plus promising a 2012 release, it doesn't seem reasonable for Samsung to release a device that's essentially the same as last year's model, especially in the wake of the Galaxy S III launch. Perhaps the manufacturer is preparing this device for markets that have not yet seen any Galaxy devices, though that remains to be seen, as there has been no official confirmation of this handset by Sammy.