Panasonic Eluga Note first impressions: Overpriced and offers nothing new

Panasonic launched a new smartphone for the Indian market today to further expand its Eluga series. The Eluga Note is yet another smartphone that is priced under the 15K mark, which already has a variety of handsets competing against each other. Panasonic hasn’t had a very strong presence in the market, but it relies on selling its products offline rather than going for online ecommerce retail stores. Here is what we think about the newly launched handset. Design and build Unlike many smartphone makers who are offering a metal build, Panasonic has gone for an all plastic build. The front panel looks strikingly similar to the LeEco Le 1s. However, the back has a removable, textured plastic panel. The back also houses the 16MP camera which slightly bulges out, along with a triple LED flash. The panel can be removed to reveal the two SIM card slots, a microSD card slot, and the removable battery.

The top edge has the 3.5mm audio jack, an infrared blaster port and the microUSB port. On the right edge you will find the power and volume buttons and at the bottom is the speaker and a microphone.

The overall design is balanced and the handset actually feels quite light, but it doesn’t feel as premium as other smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 or even the Moto G4 Plus , which is again, a full plastic body smartphone.

Display

The Eluga Note offers a 5.5-inch IPS LTPS display with a 1920x1080 full HD resolution. The display looks pretty standard and offers good brightness and sharpness. The touch response was smooth and even the viewing angles looked fine. We couldn’t test the sunlight readability but we don’t think it would face any issues. OS The handset runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the company’s FitHome user interface which is very close to a stock look. Panasonic has been using this on almost all of its Eluga range smartphones which is a wise decision since a clean interface provides a more snappy experience. It didn’t show any sign of lag and it felt smooth even while scrolling through apps or menus. The UI also comes with with a curved app drawer which only fills up half the display making it easier to reach all the icons with just your thumb. Camera

A 16MP camera with an f/1.9 aperture sits at the back of the smartphone and a 5MP camera sits on the front to take selfies. We couldn’t test the camera that much but what we saw wasn’t bad at all. It seemed to work great under well-lit conditions, but we aren’t sure if it’s any good under low light. Hardware The Eluga Note is powered by a MediaTek MT6753 octa-core processor clocked at 1.3GHz along with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The storage can be expanded further by using a microSD card. The handset also features an infrared port to control appliances like TV, AC, etc. Connectivity options include 4G LTE with VoLTE support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS with A-GPS and FM Radio. The hardware seems to work well but surprisingly, there is no fingerprint scanner, something which competitors are offering at even an even lower price range than the Eluga Note. On the battery front there is a 3,000mAh battery. Bottomline Panasonic’s attempt to enter the under 15k segment doesn’t seem that impressive. We aren’t saying that the handset is bad, but it isn’t as good as it’s competitors. Priced at Rs 13,290 it would take a beating from the LeEco Le 2 and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 . A price tag of under 10K would have made more sense. But considering that Panasonic has kept away from online channels, it could probably sell some stock in markets where consumers rely only on brick and mortar stores rather than ecommerce websites.