Panasonic was already having a big Photokina with its U.S. announcements, but the Lumix CM1, only targeted for availability in Germany and France at this time, is turning a lot of heads.
The Android 4.4 smartphone has the large 4.7-inch screen, quad-core Qualcomm processor, and LTE connectivity you'd expect from a current Android smartphone, but it's the camera that makes it exciting.
The CM1 uses a 1-inch image sensor, the same 20-megapixel BSI design found in the Lumix DMC-FZ1000, and boasts a Leica DC Elmarit 10.2mm f/2.8 ASPH. prime lens. That gives it a field of view equivalent to a 28mm prime on a full-frame camera, about the same as used by most smartphones. It can also shoot in Raw format if you want to, and it does record 4K video, albeit at a slow 15fps frame rate. If you want to capture smooth 30fps footage, you're limited to 1080p.
I wasn't able to take the CM1 out and about to take photographs around Cologne, as much as I wanted to, but I did get some time to use it. The first thing that struck me was just how slim the CM1 is; at 2.7 by 5.3 by 0.8 inches (HWD), it's a hell of a lot slimmer than the Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 (2.8 by 5.2 by 1.4 inches), and unlike the Galaxy Camera it's a phone, so you can send SMS text messages and make voice calls.
The CM1 also avoids one of the Galaxy Camera's big pitfalls, which is the lack of physical controls. There's a physical ring around the lens that can adjust the aperture or shutter speed depending on which mode you're using, which goes a long way to offer creative control. You'll still have to change shooting modes using the touch screen, but the interface to do so, a touch-screen version of a physical mode dial, seems a bit easier to use than the concentric half-circles that Samsung uses in the Galaxy line.
I was most impressed by just how quickly the lens locked focus on a subject. The Lumia 1020 may pack more pixels in its smaller image sensor, but it's painfully slow to focus. The CM1 locked on to an orchid at the table where I was able to spend some time with the camera very quickly. The 1-inch sensor did a great job blurring the background when the flower filled the frame, and while Panasonic doesn't list a minimum focus distance in its data sheet, I was able to get pretty close to the flower and lock on. I wasn't able to save the images I captured on my own memory card, but I was allowed to take an image of the phone's screen when playing back photos.
Like the 1020, there is a digital zoom. When zooming up to 2x the CM1 simply crops the image in-camera, so you'll still end up with a 10-megapixel photo at the 56mm equivalent field of view. It can extend its reach to 4x using a digital zoom, but it's unclear what resolution those images will be. But unlike the Lumia 1020, the camera's flash is an LED light, not a traditional camera flash. The 1-inch sensor should allow you to push the ISO fairly high and still get decent results, but we won't know for sure just how good it will be until we get it into the lab for testing.
The CM1 supports LTE, WCDMA, and GSM cellular communication, but the supported bands aren't listed, so we don't know how useable the device will be in the United States. If you want one desperately, you can purchase it in France or Germany for the steep price of 900 euros. That's expensive, even for an unlocked phone, but when you consider that a similar camera with a 1-inch sensor and prime lens, the Samsung NX Mini, is priced at $450, the premium price is an easier pill to swallow.