If you live in the US and you’ve been eyeing the Panasonic Lumix CM1 since its debut last year, now you can finally make the phone and its Leica-made lens your own.
The Panasonic Lumix CM1 is now available for pre-order for $999.99 from Panasonic’s online shop as well as retailers like Adorama and B&H. Obviously the main draw of the CM1 is its camera, which is a 20.1-megapixel shooter with a 1-inch sensor, f/2.8 Leica Lens, manual control ring, and mechanical shutter. It’s also got features like 4K video capture and RAW image support, and thankfully it’s also got a microSD slot that you can use to store all of those ginormous photo and video files.
When it comes to the smartphone side of the Lumix CM1, you’re looking at a 4.7-inch 1920×1080 display, 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, the aforementioned microsSD slot that supports cards up to 128GB, and a 2600mAh battery. The CM1 is unlocked and supports LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 7, and 17, which means that it should work with AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. Finally, the CM1 comes preloaded with Android 4.4, but Panasonic says that an Android 5.0 update is slated to arrive in June 2015.
While the CM1 is a bit pricey for an unlocked smartphone, it also includes features like a 1-inch sensor, Leica lens, and manual control ring, all of which are things that we don’t often see in the smartphone world. The phone is clearly aimed at photography enthusiasts, and for those people in the US that consider themselves to be photogs, it’s great to see Panasonic bring the unlocked CM1 to the States.