Panasonic Eluga Ray X

Panasonic Eluga Ray X : A smart and powerful smartphone

Panasonic is a Japanese smartphone manufacturer founded in the year 1918. The company offers wide range of products in multiple categories like home appliances, televisions, personal computers, mobile phones, audio equipment, cameras, broadcasting equipment, projectors, automotive electronics, and smartphones and is one of the largest elctronic manufacturing company in the world. It has established its foothold in the budget smartphone segment with its successful Eluga series of mobile phones in India. It has incorporated innovative and user-friendly features in its recently launched phones – Panasonic Eluga Ray X and Eluga Ray Max. Its latest entry-level phone - Panasonic Eluga Ray X price is Rs 8999 and is available in multiple colour variants- Gold, Rose Gold and Space Grey.

Pros :

1. Excellent cameras with LED flash
2. Robust configuration
3. Ample RAM to ensure efficient multitasking and lag-free performance
4. Gorilla Glass protection
5. Fingerprint sensor
6. Great battery life
7. Unique Arbo Artificial Intelligence feature to enhance user experience

Cons :

1. Heavy weight
2. Lacks fast charging support
3. Non-removable battery
4. It is not water-proof

Display and Design :

This entry level phone by Panasonic is sports an impressive and elegant full metal body with 2.5D curved design, 5-point touch and a stylus for touchscreen. It comes with 5.5-inch (13.97cm) IPS HD capacitive touchscreen display having resolution of 1280x720 pixels and pixel density of 267ppi. This bigger sized display makes reading, surfing internet and watching videos a better experience and comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection against scratches or physical damages. Lookwise, it is a candybar shaped mobile with dimensions of 153.4mm x 77mm x10.5 mm. sports a premium unibody design with 2.5D glass in the front. Its rounded edges and curved rear panels offers good grip while holding. The display offers high-quality bright images with wider viewing angles to have theater-like experience at home and enjoy viewing multimedia content on the screen. In terms of weight, it is bulky weighing 193gms and hence it might be little difficult to carry the device for longer time duration. It offers dual SIM functionality which will support Micro SIMs in both the slots.

Internal Processor and Storage :

If you are fed up of your phone slowing down or getting hanged every time you open a large app, then this Panasonic phone is the right choice. The handset is powered with latest quad-core (having four Cortex A53 cores) Mediatek MT6737 processor clocked at 1.3 GHz paired with ample 3GB RAM to provide seamless and lag-free multitasking and powerful performance. This robust configuration ensures that you can do mulitple switching between the applications at the same time without worrying about any performance issues or hiccups. The phone will run faster while downloading apps, sharing pictures, download content, playing games and viewing your favourite videos. To enhance the gaming experience, it supports ARM Mali T720 at 650 Mhz for graphics. In terms of software specifications, it runs on latest Android v6.0 Marshmallow operating system which is based with Fithome user interface which is very convenient and offer Android stock experience without any lags. The phone comes with 32GB inbuilt memory which is quite sufficient to store apps, pictures, songs, videos and data and the user will not run out of space easily. However, the internal storage space can be further expanded upto 64GB via a dedicated microSD card slot which is quite enough and can even store heavy games and install more applications.

Camera Quality :

In terms of photography department, it is equipped with 13MP autofocus rear camera powered by CMOS sensor and supporting various modes like Professional, Panorama, HDR (High Dynamic Range mode), Night mode, Burst Mode for Capture Images, Just-shut Mode (to select best images of a moving objects) and Sports mode and features like LED flash, 4X digital zoom, 3GP Format Video Recording, 1/3.2 Sensor Size, 5P Lens, Auto Flash, Face detection, Touch to focus and delivers impressive results in all types of light conditions. The 5MP front camera also comes with LED flash and features like Wide Selfie Shot, Fixed Focus, CMOS Sensor, MP4 Format Video Recording, 1/5 inch sensor size, 4P lens and 4X digital zoom. It captures great selfies and does good quality video calling. Both the cameras can record HD videos at 30 frames per second and you can watch the beautiful moments and sceneries later on. With Wide selfie shot, you can expand the frame and include all your friends in a single selfie click. Also, its Face beautify feature enhances selfie quality and ensures more beautiful and natural pictures by choosing the parameters according to your taste. Selfie camera is decent but it may not be a great choice for selfie lovers.

Battery and Connectivity :

This 4G-enabled device is fuelled by a non-removable 4,000 mAH Li-polymer battery which can provide uninterrupted usage for more than a day on medium usage. It does not support fast charging and takes approximately 3-4 hours to charge it to a full capacity. It supports various connectivity options such as dual-SIM functionality, 2G, 3G, 4G (supports Indian bands) with VoLTE, Bluetooth v4.0, GPRS, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS/ BDS, mobile hotspot, Wi-fi direct, WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, MP3, MP4, FM radio and microUSB v2.0 port. 3.5mm headphone jack. It is also compatible with Reliance JIO since it supports VoLTE connectivity. The charging port is at the bottom and the 3.5mm headphone jack is at the top. It includes sensors such as Accelerometer, Gyroscope Sensor, Light Sensor, Compass, Magnetometer Sensor, Hall Sensor and Proximity Sensor. The fingerprint reader which is embedded in the front on the home button allows you to unlock your phone quickly using the finger. This way, you can also store and secure your confidential data. It lacks NFC.

Why Should You Not buy this phone?

• Average Display : This phone supports HD display (720p) with pixel density of 267 ppi whereas the user can easily get full HD display in this price range. In direct sunlight, the display might be dull and not crisp.
• Heavy weight : At 193 grams, the device is bulky and is slightly uncomfortable to carry it all the time.
• Lack of fast charging : Normally all the phones similar to Panasonic Eluga Ray X price have fast charging feature. You do not have to wait for longer time to charge it to its full capacity.

Additional Feature :

Arbo Intelligent feature : This feature is equipped with self-learning technology that analyses the user behaviour, maps their daily activities like calls and messages and provide suggestions on screen such as frequently contacted phone numbers and SMS users and apps used and also remind you of your pending tasks, upcoming appointments or plans. This also identifies the frequently visited locations by the user and informs to change the phone settings accordingly. The AI-powered virtual assistant tracks all the operating applications on the smartphone, gathers the detailed information on their strategies and will give suggestions to the user regarding them. Currently, this feature is not installed on the phone and will be available to the user via an OTA update withing 2-3 weeks.

What makes Panasonic Eluga Ray X unique?

This is the only Panasonic smartphone to have highest onboard storage (32 GB) and Arbo Intelligent feature in the price range between Rs. 5000 to Rs. 10,000.

Final Verdict :

Panasonic Eluga Ray X comes with powerful hardware specifications and great battery life which can easily last for more than a day on a single charge. It is well designed to meet a customer's needs. The perormance, metallic looks, battery life and cameras are very good. Hence reasonable Panasonic Eluga Ray X price is thoroughly justifiable as it is equipped with additional features like front flash, fingerprint sensor, gorilla glass, Arbo Virtual Assistant etc.