Panasonic outs a Lumix phone — yes, we said phone

Overseas, there’s a bunch of things happening in the world of cameras, with Photokina on in Germany showcasing all that’s new in the world of cameras and digital cameras, and one of the important things happening is actually a phone.

It’s not just your regular phone, though, as it’s a phone and a camera, similar to the sort of cameraphone developments Samsung and Nokia have each been working on, with a phone that has the guts of a camera, and an app made for people who love to take pictures like a photographer.

For Panasonic, this cameraphone will be the CM-1, a touchscreen smartphone with a 4.7 inch Full HD display, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.3GHz, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, a microSD slot to expand this, and support for WiFi, Bluetooth, Near-Field Communication (NFC), and 4G LTE.

It will also come with a Leica lens on the back, extruded slightly from the back of the phone, and capable of shooting 20 megapixel images at between f2.8 and f11, with some aperture priority (A), shutter priority (S), and manual (M) controls applied to the app on the phone.

The phone itself will rely on Google’s Android 4.4 “KitKat,” and Panasonic will be employing the Venus Engine from its cameras to process the photos on the smartphone, while also offer 4K Ultra HD video capture as well as the Full HD 1080p standard.

Unfortunately, Panasonic has no immediate plans to release the CM-1 locally, even if it does manage to grab our attention more than a lot of the other camera announcements, with a representative for the company telling GadgetGuy that “the DMC-CM1 is a global Photokina announcement, and Panasonic Australia currently has no announcement to make on the DMC-CM1.”

A shame, too. We’d really like to see this locally.