New Cellphone Purchase - Panasonic P75 - Hands on

I wanted an entry level android for my mother. Being entry level meant about INR 4000/- of budget. That is about $60. I looked at a number of phones in budget segment, but problem being there was no main-stream brand present here. All I could find was Micromax / Zen / iBall / Intex / Xolo. No Samsung / LG / HTC / Motorola / Lenovo / Xiaomi / Oppo / Vivo etc here. I found couple of old gen ZTE's and one current gen Alcatel ( Pixi 4  - retailing for INR 5000/- ). Not interesting enough. The oddball is Panasonic which offers decent Android phones from INR 3000/-. In fact I use a Panasonic T44 these days as my main driver - bought it for INR 3200/- or about $48. It serves me well with 2500mAh battery and all needed functions. The only thing I miss is IPS LCD, but for me battery anxiety is a thing of past now. Apparently we have too many other things to be worrying about instead of cellphone battery. Haha.

Anyway so for me the criteria for the purchase was set. Big battery, decent specs, and IPS screen - mostly 5Inch HD, but I would take a 4inch IPS screen too. Sadly didn't find one. The couple of ZTE had IPS screens but had smaller batteries, and older chipsets (and Kitkat Gaah!).

So after looking at all the options I settled on the Panasonic P75. Mainly because the reviews were not terrible - sometimes average can be good.

So I spent the sum and ordered it for next day delivery since I'm leaving for my hometown in couple of days. All this done on Amazon. Yesterday I received the parcel.

Lets take a look at the specs:

Panasonic P75 Full Specificatons

General
2G NETWORK     850/900/1800/1900
3G NETWORK     900/2100Panasonic P75
SIM         Dual Sim

Body
DIMENSIONS     144.9 x 71 x 8.95 mm
WEIGHT         157 g
Display
TYPE         HD IPS Display
SIZE         720 X 1280
MULTITOUCH     yes
PROTECTION     NO

Sound
LOUDSPEAKER     yes
3.5MM JACK     yes

Memory
CARD SLOT     yes Up to 32 Gb
INTERNAL     8 Gb
PHONEBOOK     yes

Data
GPRS         yes
EDGE         yes
SPEED         14.5 Mbps
WLAN         Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
BLUETOOTH     yes

Camera
PRIMARY     8 MP
FEATURES     Auto Focus
VIDEO         Yes 720P
SECONDARY     Yes

Features
OS         Android 5.1
CPU         Mediatek MT6580 1.3GHz quad-core
SENSORS     Proximity sensor Accelerometer Ambient light sensor Gyroscope
GPS         A-Gps
JAVA         No
COLORS         Champagne Gold

Battery        5000 mAh
STAND-BY     1500m
TALK TIME     659min

So for INR 5000/- we are getting good specs.

After work when I reached home, I opened the retail box to check out if everything was alright. Thankfully it was. Inside comes the handset - Battery is mentioned as Non-removable, but I saw only a sticker over the battery. Maybe peel it off and put in a new one whenever this one dies. The charger provided is 5V 1.5A, which is better than plain 5V1A chargers we get with all others. There's a headphone with in-ear kind of tips. The micro-usb cable is long enough and looked to be of good quality. Also provided is a screen protector. That's it for the box.

The handset supports one micro-SD cards and two micro SIMs - no hybrid sim madness here. The back cover is wraparound type and the plastic is of low quality and wobbly. The champagne color is garish, but better than white at hiding abuse. The screen is good being IPS and of OGS variety.

So overall okay handset. I then turned it on and checked out basic operations. It was fairly fine - kind of about Snapdragon 400 kind of performance. Good enough.

Lets put it through a thorough review later.