Panasonic P51 Review

Introduction:

Panasonic is well-known as a home appliance company but its mobile phones are not really well-known in India. What’s surprising that Panasonic has not really marketed itself in the mobile phone segment in India, until now.  

Design:

The Panasonic P 51 feels quite substantial in the hand. The 5-inch display has a generous bezel all round and the sides and the back have a smooth rubberized coating. The back is completely sealed off and the volume rocker and power button are placed on top. The 8MP camera lens protrudes out a bit due to the slim chassis, so you’re going to have to be careful when placing it down.

The phone also comes with a capacitive stylus. However, there’s no place to keep the stylus with the phone. Hence, we’re not sure how people would use it.

The phone has dual SIM-card slots and both of these slots are micro-SIM slots.

Display:

The 5 inch HD IPS display looks really great, partly due to a high pixel density of 294 ppi. The panel is evenly backlit and produces bright, vivid colours and sharp text. The display is also protected by Dragon Trail Glass and features an oleo phobic coating as well. 

Interface:

The Panasonic P51 is powered by a MediaTek MT6589 quad core processor clocking at 1.2GHz and is paired with 1GB of RAM. Internal memory is 4GB and this can be expanded with a micro SD card.

Panasonic is running Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean on this phone and hasn't tampered much with its interface. 

Camera:

The 8MP autofocus camera gave good results in well-lit conditions, and in low light they were of average quality. Close-ups and portraits came out really well. Videos record in 1080p full HD mode and come out well in daylight. However, as with the images, they suffer in low light mode and aren't really all that great.

Battery:

The Panasonic P51 features a huge 2500 mAh battery. This provided the phone with enough power to comfortably last an entire day with heavy usage. 

Performance:

The phone runs smoothly owing to its fantastic hardware and multitasking is a breeze. All the applications we tested ran smoothly. Boot up time is fairly quick, and apps load quickly. Games play without any issues.

The P51 also comes pre-installed with a bunch of applications. There’s a file manager, Chrome, Evernote, Google+, Skitch, Media Share for DLNA, ToDo and WeChat.

Both the SIM-card slots run smoothly. However, we found it a bit strange the only one of the SIM cards can run 3G while the other runs 2G.

Conclusion:

The Panasonic P51 is a phone packed with some great features. The display is one of the major attractions and the relatively untouched android interface makes it a close to pure android experience as possible. The dual-SIM feature is also a great feature.

The review is written by experts at Reliance Digital.

Samsung : A Bright galaxy of smartphone stars?

Samsung is basking under the emphatic glory of it's Galaxy smartphone series sales that has touched a figure of close to 60 million phones now, which comprises last year's runaway success phone Galaxy S2 leading with 28 million units sold, Original Galaxy S phone launched in 2010 with 24 million units and another breakthrough "Phablet" device Galaxy Note selling 7 million units after it's October 2011 launch that goes to prove this phone sold close to 1 million units every month after it's launch.

This stellar achievement is something Samsung would not miss to brag about, and it has a potential winner on hand with Galaxy S3 getting rave reviews from critics and smartphone enthusiasts, London Olympics would prove the right vehicle for promoting Galaxy S3, since Galaxy S3 is on the way to shattering records touching a figure of 9 million in pre-orders. Samsung has already warned of shipping delays as fans have started queuing up to buy S3. This feat would surpass Apple's previous record of selling 4 million units of iPhone 4S within 3 days of it's launch, even Galaxy S2 took 6 months to sell 10 million units.

Another surprise hit that came out of Samsung's smartphone stable was in Galaxy Note which got criticized for it's awful screen size just when the "God Phone" set standards of an ideal screen size to 3.5"display, a prankster like Samsung seems switched these display numbers around and poked it's way out with Note sporting 5.3" display that brought the stylus back from the tech dump grave. The last phone 2 phones I used with a stylus were Sony Ericsson W950i and Moto Rokr music addiction phone, back then smart apps were non existent on these so-called "smartphones" which eventually rendered stylus worthless. Samsung has being thoughtful to tailor apps for Galaxy Note which would allow both the creative and professional types to best utilize the stylus on this phone, they even launched a special app challenge contest for the S-Pen (stylus branding for Galaxy Note)

Steve Jobs had ridiculed the idea of using stylus for the iPhone however Apple is now learned to have patented Advanced Stylus design, Samsung also knew it had to come up with an efficient and less clunky solution if it had to prove stylus to be a useful accessory for Galaxy Note. I am making it a habit to carry my note with me for meetings and skip my laptop or notepad for taking notes in office, until now I can say the experience has being good. Though Galaxy note would not be a phone that suit's the taste of every smartphone users, a research report from ABI predicts "Phablet" devices touching a sales figure of 208 million units by 2015 which feels pretty exaggerated right now, however according to their report the key factor of "two in one device" would be the driving force in order to fuel sales of "Phablet" devices. If you thought screen size was a deterrent check this body to screen ratio comparison made by a Reddit user Thare who crowned Galaxy Note to be the best in this category, LG has also launched a a 5 inch Optimus -VU phone to enter this segment. Dell could have taken the lead in the "Phablet" segment because it had Android OS on their Streak phone series, however they failed to position these devices properly in the market and fell behind in porting Android OS updates on time which caused them to pull the plug on their tablet phone offering.

Samsung is not resting on it's laurels with these high end smartphone range, it has come up with a 2.6" display Galaxy Pocket Android phone which costs approx INR 6900 that goes to show a company that is on a roll in production and marketing which is making other mobile companies shuffle their plans as well. On a closing note, read this humorous feature article on how smartphones and "Phablets" could probably change the Gentlemen's dressing in order to adapt to the next level of gadget evolution.

Leave your comments and reply if you feel Samsung's dominance in smartphone segment is going to be short lived or does this company now have a right profile of products growing without the fear to innovate and experiment.