Samsung Galaxy S6 edge Plus hands-on: Is bigger better?

Samsung's message for the new Galaxy S6 edge Plus is a simple one: bigger is better. The new handset has been announced in London and will go on sale in the UK in early September, right when Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 6s Plus.

But let us focus on the new Samsung for now. It carries the same gorgeous, curved design as the regular S6 edge, but where that phone has a screen measuring 5.1in, this one is a massive 5.7in.

Despite this, the phone is 154.4mm tall, four fewer than the iPhone 6 Plus, which has a smaller 5.5in screen. Resolution for the new edge Plus remains the same as before at 2560 x 1440 - much higher than the 1920 x 1080 iPhone.

But let us put numbers aside for a minute and focus on how the phone looks. In gold - actually a nice shade of champagne and much more attractive than you might think - the S6 edge Plus looks fantastic. Gorgeous. There is no getting away from the size of this phone, but the lack of any screen bezels and a skinny top and bottom do an excellent job at hiding its heft.

I was a big fan of the regular edge and the new model is equally as attractive; it may have taken Samsung a few years, but the design of its flagships is now absolutely on par with Apple. In fact, in purely hardware terms I am inclined to say Samsung has the upper hand - and with Apple very unlikely to change the design of its iPhones with the 's' upgrades in September, this could remain the case for a year.

Around the back, the S6 edge Plus (or the S6+, but Google isn't so keen on that stylisation) has the same glass panel as the smaller model, complete with protruding 16-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation. This is joined by a 5MP camera on the front, also with optical stabilisation. New for the edge Plus - and the equally new Galaxy Note 5, which has not yet been given a release date for UK and Europe - is a live video feature which broadcasts directly from the phone to YouTube live and as you record.

Also new for the larger edge is faster wireless charging. Place the phone on the charging pad (not included) and the battery will recover from zero to 100% in two hours, an hour quicker than the smaller S6 edge.

Finally, Samsung Pay makes its debut on the S6 edge Plus - but only in the US and South Korea now. Samsung will need to strike a complete set of deals with UK banks and retailers before launching here, just as Apple did with its payment service, Apple Pay. When it does arrive, Samsung Pay will let you pay for goods by tapping the phone against the card reader.

Inside, the new phone shares the same hardware as the smaller edge. This means an octa-core Exynos 7 processor with two cores running at 2.1GHz and four more running at 1.5GHz. There is 4GB of RAM, one more than in the smaller phone. Naturally, with a specification sheet like that the new phone is incredibly quick. But we haven't spent too long with the new phone, so will reserve a more complete judgement for our full review next month.