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Panasonic India on Thursday announced the P99, its latest Android-powered smartphone specifically aimed at consumers in the South Asian country. The handset is seeking to compete in the entry-level segment of the smartphone market, being priced at Rs 7,490, or just under $115. The Panasonic P99 is meant to offer consumers a high value for money and was seemingly designed as a reliable daily driver for the average user looking for a 4G-enabled Android smartphone.
The device boasts a 5-inch display panel with an HD resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels amounting to a conventional widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. Beneath the surface is a still-unspecified quad-core SoC clocked at a maximum operating frequency of 1.25GHz, as well as 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal flash memory expandable by up to 128GB via a microSD card slot which can also double as a secondary SIM tray. The rear panel of the handset houses an 8-megapixel camera with a regular LED flash, whereas its top bezel accommodates a 5-megapixel sensor. Both imaging systems are accompanied by somewhat robust software supporting HDR, Beauty, Night, and Panorama modes, whereas the main camera can also be controlled manually as part of its Pro mode. The handset is powered by a 2,000mAh battery which may be enough to get it through the day given how its screen isn’t particularly large and its SoC doesn’t seem to be of the power-hungry variety. The Panasonic P99 tips the scales at 145g and is 144.6 x 71.8 x 8.6mm in size. Bluetooth 4.0 support is also part of the package here, as is 4G VoLTE and GPS. The smartphone runs a somewhat modified version of Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box and it’s currently unclear whether it will ever receive an upgrade to a newer OS build, though that doesn’t seem like a probable scenario.
The Indian branch of Panasonic has been relatively active in recent times, having introduced a number of new Eluga-series devices with aggressive price tags and respectable specifications, with its latest offering being in line with such a strategy. There’s still no information on whether the Panasonic P99 will eventually make its way to other markets but consumers in India will soon be able to purchase it in Black, Blue, and Gold variants.