Panasonic P31 smartphone with gesture unlock teased for March launch

Panasonic India on Tuesday started teasing the Panasonic P31 smartphone on its Facebook page, which it said was "launching soon." The first teaser touted the Panasonic P31's 'gesture play' unlock feature. It was followed up with another teaser on Thursday, talking about a 'Pop-I' video player. The company also detailed a March 2014 launch. For now, there are no indications of the pricing of the smartphone.

According to a report by AndroidOS, Panasonic India also uploaded a teaser video on YouTube, which was subsequently removed. The report claims the video contained some specifications of the Panasonic P31. As per the report, the P31 will run Android, but the Android version has not been specified. It wasn't also detailed whether the device is a single SIM or a dual-SIM one.

The P31, according to the reported video, will feature a five-inch FWVGA (854x480p), oleophobic (screen that is smudge-free) screen, a 1.3GHz quad-core processor (manufacturer unspecified). Details about the GPU and the RAM of the device were not reported.

Other reported details from the purported teaser video indicate the Panasonic P31 will have a 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front camera. There are no details on the storage capacity of the phone, or whether it will have expandable storage or not. The P31 is touted to have 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity options, besides also having GPS on board. There are no details on the battery that phone will use to power its processes. Nor are the dimensions of the device unveiled.

Coming back to the official teaser images from the Panasonic India Facebook page, we see one of the highlights of the P31 is its 'gesture play' feature, which will allow the user to 'draw to unlock' the device. The second teaser (second teaser link), talking about the 'Pop-I player' on the Panasonic P31, details a "multi-tasking video application". Both teasers show off 'app partners', listed as Evernote- note taking app, India Today- news app, Hungama- music app, Readwhere- magazine app, Sony LIV- Sony television app and the Opera Mini Browser.

Panasonic in India currently has five smartphones that it retails, all of which are in the entry-level segment and the mid-level segment. Its last launch was the T31, a budget smartphone running Android 4.2, for Rs. 7,990 in October last year.