Yesterday Panasonic has introduced its flagship smartphone series in India by launching Eluga U in sub 20K category. At launch we had managed to play with the device for some time.
Design Of Panasonic Eluga U :-
Panasonic has nicely designed this device, its quite slim and feels nice into hand, it has curved corners which make it easy to hold in hand. It has got microSD card slot and Dual SIM tray on its left side, on right it has power button and volume rockers, there is a space between volume rockers which might confuse first time user. It has a nice glass texture at back which gives a nice look to the device. Back panel is non-removable.
At front it has a 5 inch IPS LCD HD display screen with OGS technology which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, it has good viewing angles, nice brightness and colors which won’t disappoint you at all. It do comes with screen guard in the box. Touch response is also very good and one thing which we liked in this phone is that Panasonic has tweaked with OS to enable landscape mode viewable on home screen, which is usually not found on other Android devices.
Hardware Of Panasonic Eluga U:-
Under the hood Panasonic Eluga U is powered by 1.2 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC paired with 2 GB of RAM, and has 16 Gb of internal memory which can be expandable up to 32 GB, it has a non-removable 2,500 mAh battery, for connectivity it has 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and Micro USB, it has accelerometer, light, proximity and gyro sensor.
Software And UI Of Panasonic Eluga U:-
Panasonic Eluga U runs on Android 4.4 KitKat out of box wrapped with company’s FitHome UI, its not very far from stock Android but Panasonic has customized icons and app drawers, when you tap on app drawer icon, it opens in a folder style which allows you to access all apps with one hand, you can select the grid layout of the icons on your home screen (3 x 4, 4 x 4 or 5 x 5). If you do not like FitHome UI, then you can disable it and switch back to default Android launcher. Panasonic has also provided Kwik unlock, which allows you to unlock device by double tapping on lock screen. One thing which we had noticed that it has 16 Gb of internal storage out of which 13 GB is available to user, it do support microSD card but you wont be able to transfer apps to SD Card.
Camera of Panasonic Eluga U :-
We didn’t get much time to test camera, but in our initial test we found it’s a decent camera with simple camera UI, it can record 1080p videos, one good thing is that you will get HDR mode on both rear and front camera(2 MP).
Performance of Panasonic Eluga U:-
In our initial test we hadn’t faced any lag or something like that, we were able to surf webpages, launched multiple apps at the same time and switched between them without any issue. We had played full HD video and it went smoothly.
Final Verdict on Panasonic Eluga U :-
At our first impression phone looks quite decent and good at this price tag, it has good performance but it will be too early to judge its overall performance as when you get phone and start loading apps on it, its performance will get affected.
We will be able to tell you in detail about this device when we get its review unit in coming weeks.
