Samsung Galaxy S Plus: Hands-on shots and first impressions

We'd barely spotted the Samsung Galaxy S Plus popping up on Vodafone's site when we got the opportunity to have some brief hands-on time with the S Plus itself, courtesy of Vodafone.

The Galaxy S Plus is very much a scrubbed up and rethought version of last year's Galaxy S; it's got a much faster 1.4GHz processor thrumming away, a 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED screen and a front-facing camera along with the 5-megapixel one on the back. These specs tally with the so called 'Galaxy S2 Mini' that was leaked back in March.

Underneath all of this is a decent 8GB of internal storage which can be bumped up to an extra 32GB through the old microSD slot. As you can see, it's running Samsung's own TouchWiz UI skin instead of the regular Android look and feel seen on Samsung's lower priced phones like the Galaxy Fit.

Vodafone told us that Samsung has tweaked the battery to be 24 per cent more efficient than the regular Galaxy S. It also runs on Android 2.3 out of the box, so no thumb twiddling and waiting around to get updated to Gingerbread.

Available to order from Vodafone now, the Samsung Galaxy S Plus can be had for free from £31 a month on a 24 month deal, which gives you 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data. This online-only deal bungs in 2GB of monthly BT Openzone Wi-Fi access for good measure.

Check back here soon for our full review; until then click through for some early pics and our thoughts and first impressions of the Galaxy S Plus.