Panasonic P51 Full Review
Build Quality and Design
At its launch event, Panasonic talked a lot about the emphasis and effort that went into the design process of the phone. The idea was to keep it simple and functional. They went for a clean black front with rounded edges and a glossy back. There is a 5-inch screen (with a scratch-resistant Asahi Dragontrail glass) towards the front with the earpiece grill, front-facing camera and a bunch of sensors at the top. There are no touch capactive buttons on the device.
At the top of the phone, you have the 3.5mm jack besides the plastic power button. Towards the right you have your volume rocker and right below it, the spring loaded micro SD card slot. The left side of the phone houses the two micro SIM card slots and a micro-USB port beneath it.
The glossy back (the black Panasonic P51 has a soft rubber finish back) is not removable and houses the 8MP camera and the LED flash.
Overall, the build quality of the Panasonic P51 is quite impressive and the device feels really solid in your hands.
Specifications and Hardware
The Panasonic P51 is powered by a Quad Core 1.2 Ghz Mediatek MT6589 CPU. The quad core chip is of the Cortex A7 architecture, and is coupled with a PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU for graphics. The Panasonic P51 also has 4 GB of internal storage and 1 GB of RAM.
It has a 5 inch 1280 x720p HD IPS LCD display. For imaging the Panasonic P51 also has an 8 MP main camera and a 1.3 MP front facing camera capable of HD video.
This 3G enabled phone from Panasonic also has Dual Sim Capabilities and has a massive 2500 mAh battery, and despite that remains 8.5 mm slim and 135 gms in weight.
Display and Multimedia
The display on the Panasonic P51 has a pixel density of 294 ppi, which makes it as good as any in this segment. The colour reproduction though seems a tad unnatural and the display has a slightly bluish tint to it. Since it is an IPS display, outdoor visibility and viewing angles are really impressive. Brightness is adequate too. Overall, the display is definitely one of the best in this segment. For scratch resistance, Panasonic has used Asahi Dragontrail glass, which is claimed to be better than the popular Gorilla Glass.
Due to the high quality display, the video playback on the device is again a pleasant experience. Couple this with a decent speaker and you have a really capable media consumption device.
The built in browser of the Panasonic P51 isn’t quite up to the mark. While text clarity was good due to the sharpness of the display, zooming and kinetic scrolling seemed a bit off.
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Gaming on the Panasonic P51 was not up to our expectations. Quite a lot of games stopped in between and loading time seemed quite long. You can watch our gaming review video below.
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Camera
The rear camera on the Panasonic P51 takes quite decent outdoor images. Colour reproduction and exposure are good and the only problem we had was with the over-sharpness of the images. Indoor images were not quite up to the mark. Even with the flash turned on, images turned out quite dark and under-exposed.
The same was the case with the video recording on the device, with outdoor videos coming out quite nice. The Panasonic P51 picked up ambient noise quite nicely too. To avoid shakes while recording it has incorporated software based image stabilisation.
Box Contents
Panasonic provides you with a magnetic flip cover along with the Panasonic P51, which clicks onto the back of the device. The device also comes along with a stylus, but unfortunately it does not have a port to stow the stylus away.
Conclusion
Priced at about Rs. 22,000, the Panasonic P51 seems overpriced given the fact that a lot of manufacturers offer more or less the same features in their smartphones for a lot less money. What works for the Panasonic P51 is its nice display and an impressive camera. Other than that, there is no real feature in this device that would make it feel like a device worthy of a recommendation in its segment.
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