14 DAY TRIAL // Panasonic launched the ELUGA in Germany three days ago and promised it would bring the Android smartphone to UK next week.
However, it appears that at least one UK-based retailer was able to add the Panasonic ELUGA to its portfolio one week earlier than expected.
The guys over at UnwiredView report that the ELUGA is now available for purchase in the UK via Expansys. The unlocked silver-themed Panasonic ELUGA goes for £364 ($585 or €445), but customers get an ICS upgradable smartphone that’s been IP57 certified.
Showcased two months ago at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Panasonic ELUGA features a dust- and water-resistant body. According to Panasonic, the phone has been tested for water proof up to 1 meter and 30 minutes.
Although the ELUGA is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread at launch, Panasonic confirmed it would roll out an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in the following months.
Panasonic ELUGA sports a hyper-vibrant 4.3-inch qHD OLED capacitive touchscreen display that supports 540 x 960 pixels resolution and 16 million colors. Unfortunately, the device does not come with Corning Gorilla Glass coating.
Another downside of the smartphone is the storage amount it offers users. The ELUGA embeds 8GB of internal memory and no microSD card slot for memory expansion, so owners will be limited to less than 7GB user available storage.
The phone is equipped with a dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor clocked at 1 GHz and packs 1GB of RAM. It also boasts an improved 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back, which features autofocus, LED flash and video recording.
Panasonic ELUGA is powered by a small capacity 1150 mAh battery that should provide users with up to 300 hours of standby time or up to 4 hours of talk time. This is clearly another negative of the smartphone.