14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, Panasonic has officially unveiled its new flagship smartphone, the P81 in India. The smartphone is available beginning today for the suggested retail price of Rs 18,990 ($325 / €235), which also includes some freebies.
According to fonearena, the smartphone is only available in black color, but comes with freebies worth no less than Rs 9,900 ($170 / €125), which includes 6-month Evernote Premium use worth Rs 1,800 ($30 / €22), free Hungama downloads for one month, India Today content and various Hot-n-Trendy Space offers.
In addition, the smartphone comes bundled with various accessories worth Rs 2,000 ($34 / €25), including flip cover and screen guard.
Most of the phone’s specs sheet leaked yesterday, but for those who did not read our article, here is a quick recap that should shed some light on what Panasonic P81 has to offer.
The most impressive aspect of the P81 is the fact that it comes equipped with a “true octa-core” processor, namely the 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592 CPU, which is complemented by a Mali450-MP4 graphics processing unit and, sadly, only 1GB of RAM.
The addition of another 1GB would have probably bumped the P81’s price too high to keep it competitive on the Indian smartphone market.
The good news is that Panasonic adapted well to the requirements of the Indian consumers and the P81 comes with dual-SIM capability with dual standby support.
Furthermore, the smartphone sports a large 5.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720p) resolution. No word on Corning Gorilla Glass coating for extra protection.
Another strong point of the P81 would be the enhanced 13-megapixel photo snapper on the back, which features autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording. There’s also a secondary 2-megapixel camera in the front for video calls.
On the inside, Panasonic P81 packs only 8GB of storage, but users can further expand internal memory via microSD card slot (up to 32GB).
Last but not least, the smartphone is powered by a 2500 mAh battery and offers a range of connectivity options, including 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS with A-GPS support and FM Radio.
Keep in mind that Panasonic P81 does not come with the latest version of Android; instead, the handset maker has included a previous Android 4.2 Jelly Bean version.
“With the launch of the Panasonic P81, we have reached yet another milestone as this is the first model of the ‘P’ series featured with octa-core processor.
The introduction of this model reiterates our commitment to keep innovating as we believe that it is a direct result of the consumers’ needs, and customer centricity has to be at the core of developing products for the Indian consumer,” said Manish Sharma, managing director, Panasonic India.