Preview: Panasonic P11 Smartphone

A quick-look at Panasonic's latest Snapdragon powered budget smartphone.

Chandrakant 'CK' Isi
21st Nov 2013

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Panasonic entered the Indian smartphone arena with the P51. The handset impressed us with its vibrant screen and sturdy build. Little wonder then, we expect similar quality from its latest mid-range handset P11. Unlike most budget handsets, this phone packs in a quad-core chipset manufactured by Qualcomm; Snapdragon 200 to be precise. But is it any better than those tried and tested MediaTek SoCs? The phone has just landed in our office, and before we dissect it with a full-fledged review, here are our initial impressions of the same:

Look And Feel
The phone looks a lot like its elder sibling P51. The phone has premium looking edge-to-edge glass. Unlike the P51, the typical Android capacitive keys — Home, Back, and Menu, are below the screen rather than on it. What also separates the P11 from the P51 is its removable back panel. Panasonic has been generous enough to throw in a couple of extra covers. And love it or hate it, you simply cannot ignore the florescent yellow panel. The phone’s construction is quite sturdy. It can easily take a few knocks and drops and not show up.

Coming to the subject of ergonomics, like every other over-sized phone, this 5-incher isn't ideal for single-handed use. Thankfully, the lock/power button is placed on the side, so you don't have to stretch your index finger to unlock the phone.

For those wondering about the package contents, here's what you get with the P11:
Two extra back panels.
Charger, USB cable.
Headset.

Specifications
The P11 is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 200 SOC with the processor clocked at 1.2 GHz. For photography there's an 8 megapixel rear camera, and 2 MP front snapper for selfies. The phone has 4 GB of internal storage, microSD card slot, dual-SIM (GSM) support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, and 2000 mAh battery.

Screen
Display is one of the most important aspects of a smartphone, and the P11 makes sure not to disappoint in this space. The 5" IPS screen offers good colour reproduction. However, it isn't as vibrant as that of the P51. With pixel dimensions of 1280x720, the display is quite sharp. What's sorely missing here is a scratch-resistant layer. So make sure not to put your phone and keys in the same pocket.

User Experience
The P51 offers slightly dated Android 4.1 out-of-the box. Panasonic hasn't made many changes to the stock ROM, so the interface is quite clean. However, the Snapdragon 200 chipset struggles to keep things smooth. Throughout the interface, there's consistent lag and stutter. To put things into perspective, the P11 feels noticeably sluggish than its MediaTek based counterparts. Gamers shouldn't get their hopes high either, since the onboard GPU Adreno 203 is quite dated.

To gauge its performance, we also ran a couple of synthetic benchmarks. In AnTuTu, it scored 10907 points. In another popular test Quadrant, the phone clocked in at 4540. That’s very much in line with HTC Desire 600’s scores which has the same SOC. However, in real world performance, we found the Desire 600’s user-experience relatively smoother. This may attribute to Taiwanese manufacturer’s optimised Sense UI.