The Lumix DMC-CM1 was announced at Photokina 2014, around September last year, and it surely turned a lot of heads. It’s a hybrid camera and phone – not what you’re thinking, because yes, we do admit that every high-end Android smartphone is essentially a hybrid. Panasonic‘s Lumix DMC-CM1 is more camera than phone – the camera part is not an afterthought.
Well, what exactly does it bring to the table? A lot, actually. You get a 1-inch 20MP digital sensor – the largest sensor you’ll ever see on a smartphone to date, with a Leica lens – a 28mm f/2.8 Leica DC Elmarit lens to be exact. This means you get the best possible resolution a 20MP sensor can ever give. Add to that, you get all manual controls for focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO and white balance – just like a DSLR would give you. Matter of fact, this baby will give some DSLR’s a run for their money.
On the smartphone side, you will get a 4.7-inch full HD (1080p) LCD display powered by a still very capable quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, with 2GB RAM. Internal storage is at 16GB, and because you have a high-end camera available, this calls for storage expansion capability – you get that via a microSD slot capable of reading up to 128GB. The phone part is no slouch, it’s open to all US GSM networks and has LTE connectivity. It will come with Android 4.4 out of the box, but will be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop soon.
As you may have guessed by now, this piece of magic will cost you quite a bit – it will retail for USD$1000. Really too much for a smartphone, but Panasonic bets people will think twice if you put a high-end Lumix camera on the back of the smartphone. It’s calculated risk, we suppose. One last reminder – the battery for the device is rated at 2,900mAh. For a phone, that might still be ok – but for a high-powered camera, expect to need a charger and/or an external power bank all the time.
