Panasonic Set To Enter European Smartphone Market With The Eluga, A qHD Phone Packing NFC

Until today, Panasonic had been keeping their high end Android phones to themselves in the Japanese market. That's about to change with the advent of the Eluga. Panasonic announced the new device today in Hamburg for release some time in March. We're promised that the phone will be waterproof and dustproof, which is great for all those times that you have your phone out in a dusty rain storm.

Here's a list of the key specs:

All in all, the device sounds like a fantastic device...for early 2011. Panasonic has promised to bring Android 4.0 to the device by summer of 2012, though by that time we should expect quad-core phones to be out on the market, so it's a little unclear why one would buy this phone based on specs.

The design of the phone, on the hand, might not be a bad reason to buy the device. For a manufacturer that hasn't produced a smartphone since 2006, the Eluga doesn't look horrible. A brushed metal casing houses the OLED display, with three capacitive buttons along the bottom edge of the device. The device is largely featureless, though one could argue this minimalistic approach is better than making a phone octagon-shaped for no adequately-explained reason.

Hopefully we'll hear more details about this device—like pricing and availability—at MWC next week.