Panasonic Lumix CM1 US pre-orders go live for $1000

Earlier in the year, Panasonic unveiled its Lumix CM1 smartphone/camera hybrid and promised that the device would be arriving the US this summer. That time has now arrived, the Lumix CM1 can be pre-ordered in US with a whopping price tag of $1000.

The handset’s big selling point is, of course, its camera specifications. The Lumix CM1 features a large 1-inch sensor with 20 MP resolution, Leica optics with a f/2.8 lens, optical image stabilization, and an LED flash. The larger sensor should result in superior image quality than the smaller sensors found in regular smartphones, although it’s not a replacement for a DSLR.

Panasonic has also included a range of adjustable software options to get the best shots, something which has not started showing up in some flagship smartphones. You can also capture a short 4K video clips and then pick out your favourite frames to use as still images.

On the smartphone side of things, the hardware is decent, if a little bit last-generation. The smartphone features a quad-core, 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, 2 GB of RAM, 2,600mAh battery and a 4.7-inch 1080p display with a rather decent 469 pixels per inch.

The handset is also fully 4G LTE compatible, comes with Android 4.4 which can be upgraded to Android Lollipop, and it even has a microSD card slot to save all of those high resolution shots. Although smartphone/camera hybrids are not a new idea, but the CM1’s specifications are a cut above Samsung’s most recent offering.

Where the phone is arguably let down is with its modest 16GB of storage. While this may not be a problem in most handsets, for a device which you will presumably be shooting lots of 4K video and taking plenty of high resolution snaps with, this internal memory could fill up very quickly. You’ll probably want to make use of that 128GB microSD card slot.

If you fancy picking on up for yourself, you can pre-order a Lumix VM1 from B&H and Adorama for $1000. Adorama gives an expected shipping date of June 25th. If you would like a closer look at the Panasonic Lumix CM1 before stumping up that amount of cash, be sure to check out our initial hands-on from CES 2015.