Panasonic has announced the lauch of its latest ELUGA rugged smartphone in Europe.

The new Panasonic ELUGA smartphone is a waterproof/dustproof smartphone coming in a slim design that will certainly draw some attention from costumers once it hits the market. The ELUGA smartphone comes in a slim profile with curved edges and features IP57 certification, meaning that it’s able to remain intact when submersed into water up to 1.5 meters deep.

The Panasonic ELUGA smartphone is powered by a dual-core TI 1Ghz processor aided by 1GB of RAM and will run on Android Gingerbread. Panasonic has promised an Ice Cream Sandwich update soon after launch.

The Panasonic ELUGA boasts a 4.3-inch 960×540 OLED touchscreen offering 66% display area ratio, the largest ratio on the smartphone market. You’ll basically hold a huge screen in your hand that’s also able to take pictures and record 1080p Full HD video with its 8 megapixel camera and store it on this phone’s 8GB internal memory avaiable. Other specifications include GPS/AGPS, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi, DLNA and NFC.

The Panasonic ELUGA supports GSM/EDGE and HSPA+ mobile networks and features an Eco mode that will turn of functions and apps once your phone reaches a low battery level. Reportedly, the 1150mAh battery coming with the ELUGA will offer up to 300 hours of standby and 240 minutes of talk time.

Panasonic will launch their new ELUGA smartphone in April in Europe, while the pricing remains unknown for now.