Questionable photos of an alleged”One M9 Plus” suggest HTC is planning a larger, more exciting version of its next-generation flagship.

Unlike the original model, the Plus is claimed to have a Duo Camera on its back — like last year’s One M8 — and a physical home button with a built-in fingerprint scanner on its front.

The device in the images, which were published on Chinese microblogging network Weibo, looks just like a One M8 that has spend a few painful minutes in Photoshop.

Its main rear-facing camera looks just like the One M8’s UltraPixel sensor, but it is slightly larger and has a distinct black ring around its lens. The secondary sensor appears to be unchanged. On the front of the device, you’ll notice a silver ring around the front-facing camera, and a very Samsung-esque home button, which is said to hold a fingerprint scanner.

According to the publisher of these images, the device also has a 5.5-inch Quad HD display, which is 0.5 inches bigger than the One M8’s 1080p display.

Despite that increase in size, however, the device in these images looks no bigger than the One M8. Sure, it’s not easy to tell in pictures like these, but if you look at the size of the device compared to the HTC logo on its back and the secondary camera sensor on its top, it certainly doesn’t look any bigger.

I won’t even mention that home button, which looks like it was copied and pasted from a Galaxy Note 3.

I think it’s best you don’t read too much into these shots because they’re almost certainly not genuine. And if they are, this is likely a very early prototype that still needs lots of work; there’s no way HTC would launch a device that looks like this.

But having said that, we do have reason to believe there will be a larger One M9 Plus. @Upleaks, a very reliable source of HTC leaks, has tweeted that a Plus handset — codenamed the “HTC Hima_Ultra” — is coming this year, and it’s expected to be available in March alongside the regular One M9.

HTC has already issued invitations for a March 1 event at Mobile World Congress, so we’ll know more about the One M9 and its bigger brother then.

• SourceWeibo
• ViaAndroid and Me