Panasonic P51, Impressive but Expensive!

Panasonic made its entry to the Indian smartphone market back in May this year with its P51 smartphone. Launched for Rs 26,990, the P51 was quickly available in the market at Rs 19,500. While the phone may not be affordable, it sure has a premium feel and the features can surely vouch for the product. But we'll check out how the phone performs on actual usage.

Features

The P51 smartphone sports a 5-inch display with 1280x720 pixels resolution and runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean version. The phone packs a 1.2 GHz quad-core MediaTek processor and 1 GB RAM. The phone has an 8 MP rear camera with flash and 1.3 MP front camera purely meant for video calling. For connectivity the phone has Wi-Fi, dual-SIM (3G+2G & 2G only), GPS, and Bluetooth v 4.0 and micro-USB v2.0 and loaded with a 2500 mAh non removable battery. The phone comes bundled with stylus, magnetic flip cover and ear plugs.

Performance

The phone feels fairly light at 135 grams and with a slim body features all around, P51 is easy to use in one hand and never feels like a big display device even for a second. The phone is not the slimmest but at 5-inch P51 can be deceptive. At the front, Panasonic has left out some space and considering the home, back and multi-window options are there on the display, the company could have made use of the extra space. The phone has a dual-color touch with black on the front and white finish at the back. Panasonic P51 is made of plastic and at the back you'll find a sticker that tells you how to open the microSIM and microSD card slot, which are positioned on left and right side of the phone respectively.

That said, when compared to Samsung Galaxy Grand, the P51 is lighter, slimmer and better good looking. The 8 MP camera at the back is strangely placed and can be felt on the ground which could leave the lens prone to scratches easily. The P51 comes with a stylus but it seems Panasonic forgot to make some place to hold the stylus, which means you have to carry it along in your pocket. The ear plugs offered were decent with good sound and bass quality.

In terms of raw performance, the P51 gave us a decent account for its features; however the display falls short of 1280x720 and comes to around 1180x 720 as per details from AnTuTu. The 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU offers good multi-tasking capability and we found some heating issues when our activity was pure intense, with Wi-Fi/3G, gaming, music, web browsing.

In terms of testing scores, P51 scored 12751 on AnTuTu, 3876 on Quadrant and 1469 on Vellamo HTML5. The camera performance does not dazzle and is average at best. The front camera is decent enough for video calling and quick selfies. The battery back-up of 2500 mAh battery on P51 was quite a handful. We ran the phone on single charge of 70% with average use of Internet, gaming, music and some videos and managed for close to a day's time.