P51 is the first smartphone launched by Panasonic in India. It was launched in May 2013 for Rs 26,990 and right now it is available at a best buy price of Rs 19,000. So will the phone be able to attract the users attention or it will just end up being another Android smartphone in the market. Read on to find out.
Display & Design
Panasonic P51 measures 144 x 75 x 8.5 mm and weighs 135 grams. It has rounded corners and a 5 inch touch screen display in the front. From the front device looks similar to the LG Nexus 4. The device has a front glass panel and the back is made up of glossy plastic. It has a slightly protruding back panel which gives it a unique design.
The display is quite good with decent viewing angles. It has a 1280×720 pixels resolution and 294ppi. The touch screen is quite responsive and we didn’t use the stylus provided with the device much due to the fact that it operates quite well even with the fingers.
The 5 inch display is made up of Asahi Dragontrail glass which is claimed to be better than Gorilla Glass in terms of scratch resistance. There are no physical touch buttons present below the display. They are embedded in the screen itself, so once you turn on the display you would see the home, menu and recent apps buttons as a part of the display.
Above the display you have a steel mesh speaker grill, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera and proximity & ambient light sensors.
At the top of the device you have a 3.5mm audio jack and a power/lock key.
On the right side you have a volume rocker and a spring loaded microSD card slot. The volume rocker is present at the corner of the phone which is bit unusual and initially we faced some problems while trying to access it.
On the left side you have a slot for two SIM cards to support dual SIM functionality. You also have a micro USB port on the left side.
The back of the device is made up of glossy plastic material. In case users opt for a Black variant of the device they will find that the back is made up of a soft rubberized material. At the back you have a 8 megapixel camera along with LED flash, Panasonic branding below the camera and a loud speaker.
Overall the phone has a good build quality & design. Users can opt for the Black version if they want to have a rubberized back but it will be attracting fingerprints or you can opt or the white variant which comes with a glossy plastic back.
Hardware & Performance
Panasonic P51 is powered by a 1.2 GHz Mediatek MT6589 quad core processor along with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. Users can expand the storage by using a microSD card of upto 32GB storage. In terms of normal usage the device is quite smooth and you won’t face any kind of lag or slowness. But while playing high end games the device would suffer lag. We performed few benchmark tests on the device and here is a video showing the results of those tests:
So the device scored 3920 in Quadrant standard, 13580 in Antutu benchmark and 43.9 fps in Nenamark2. These are quite decent score which indicates that the device is powerful enough to handle most of your daily tasks and apps.
Talking about the connectivity features P51 supports 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. It is a dual SIM smartphone with dual standby mode. Out of 4GB internal storage only 1.6GB is actually user accessible.
Software
The device runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS with slight modifications made to the stock Android. The device comes preloaded with apps such as CamCard, Economic Times, Evernote, CamScanner, Kingsoft Office, TOI & WeChat. The device has a music player app with custom skin and it also has a good looking radio app. The software part is neither bad nor good it is just like most of the other Android smartphone available in the market running on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS.
Camera
Panasonic P51 packs a 8 megapixel back camera along with LED flash. The camera is capable of capturing great images in good light conditions. Talking about the low light conditions though the device has a LED flash but still the images captured in low light have higher noise levels and they are pretty average in terms of quality.
Here are sample images captured using the back camera:
As you can see above the camera can capture some really good images. We are really impressed with the macro shot capability of the device. The device also has a 1.3 front facing camera for video calling.
Battery Life
The phone is powered by a 2,500mAh non removable battery. The device has good battery life and with moderate usage the device lasted for around 1.5 days. During the day we made few calls, browsed internet, played games for around 1 hour, watched few videos and kept our social media accounts & email on sync mode. The battery life is surprisingly quite good and better than most of the devices available in the same price segment.
Conclusion
The Panasonic P51 was initially launched for Rs 26,990 in India but it is now available at around Rs 19,000 which is its best buy price. The device is surely a great deal at 19k and users looking for a mid range Android smartphone can surely check this device out. The phone has good build quality, display, battery life and the quality of captured images is also quite good.
Pros:
- Build Quality
- Good Camera Quality
- Battery Life
Cons:
- Low internal memory
