Smartphone With Camera Becomes Lumix Camera With Smartphone At Panasonic

The Wall
Street Journal has reported even Panasonic executives initially queried
whether the DMC-CM1 was in fact a camera or smartphone.

“When I
talked about the product at a meeting of executives, they asked me
over and over whether it’s a phone or a camera,” Panasonic AVC Networks Company vice president, Takuya Sugita, told the WSJ in a
recent interview. “But this is a camera.”

Panasonic
showcased the DMC-CM1 at the recent Photokina 2014 image fair in
Germany, where it was awarded the ‘Highlight of Photokina’ and one
of the ‘Photokina Star 2014’ awards.

Equipped
with a 1-inch high-sensitivity 20 MP MOS sensor and a Leica DC lens,
the DMC-CM1 sports a 4.7 inch full-HD display, is powered by a 2.3
GHz processor, and runs on Android 4.4.

Inside the new Panasonic device is a Qualcomm 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. There is a microSD expansion slot to increase the storage space with 128GB more.

There’s a high-quality camera lens on the rear of the smartphone portion of the Lumix CM1. Meanwhile, the face of the smartphone (the view screen of the camera) is a 4.7-inch full HD display.

The device also has NFC technology and is capable of receiving LTE and WiFi connections. The Verge notes that this is the first Panasonic entry in the smartphone arena in the last two years. Shortcomings in previous devices kept the company away from that competitive market.

An initial planned release in Europe suggests a cost of 900 Euros, translating to more than $1,100 if it was for sale at a comparable price in the U.S. today. But not specific price tag or date for release in the Australian market has yet been set, so time will tell.

Expect to see more ‘photo and video first’ smart devices in the near future, however. This Panasonic entry was debuted at Photokina, a photography technology convention held in Germany.