So, it turns out that there was no misprint on the press release. Samsung Galaxy S II LTE is, in fact, both bigger and better than the plain old Samsung Galaxy S II.

Placing our trusty, old, first flush SII next to the newcomer at IFA 2011, it all became perfectly clear. We all knew that the processor had taken a slight clock speed jump up from a dual-core 1.2 GHz unit to a dual-core 1.5GHz, but there are also certain elements of design that Samsung has thrown in. The shape of the phone is different - not by much, but different it is.

samsung galaxy s ii lte pictures and hands on image 5

It's something like the kind of difference between the iPhone 3GS compared to the iPhone 4 only not as pronounced. The square shape of the original SGS2 has had its corners softened a touch and, in general, chassis-wise, the LTE version is almost a halfway house between that and the Nexus S. It's also marginally thicker with the chin on the reverse much closer to the overall profile of the rest of the phone.

On the rear, the camera has also been re-jigged slightly and the textured back-cover smoothed out. Where the flash on the device used to sit lateral compared to the camera lens, it's now one on top of the other. All the same, the actual imaging system, and specs thereof, remain the same.

samsung galaxy s ii lte pictures and hands on image 4

The change you'll most notice though, is the size of the screen. What the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE offers is a pretty hefty 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display and somehow that extra 0.2 inches on the diagonal does make a difference. It takes it from a big phone across that threshold to a massive one. Samsung hasn't said whether it's upped the resolution to match but we certainly didn't see any degradation in quality with our hands-on.

Last of all, of course, the LTE version is, yes, LTE-enabled but seeing as the UK's mobile infrastructure isn't, it could be quite some time before we get the new Samsung Galaxy S 2 over here at all.