Hold all calls – Panasonic’s CM10 smartphone camera drops the phone part
Still one of the best cameras ever fitted to a phone - even if the CM10 can't make calls
Panasonic’s latest Lumix is what happens when a high-end compact camera and a top-spec smartphone get smashed together.
The Lumix CM10 is the successor to 2014’s Lumix CM1, a smartphone/camera hybrid that had the best imaging tech of any handset out there.
By stripping out the ability to make calls, this new model shouldn’t be eye-wateringly expensive. It’s still got a 4G SIM card, though, so you can upload photos wirelessly.
That’s absolutely massive for a smartphone, and when it’s paired with a 28mm f/2.8 Leica lens, the results are some of the best photos you’re likely to get from something that still slips in a pocket. 1080p video at 30fps and 4K recording at 15fps is the same as the CM1.
The other specs stay the same too, meaning you get a 4.7in, 1080p screen, a Snapdragon 801 CPU and 2GB of RAM. The CM10 arrives with Android Marshmallow out of the box, and there’s a microSD card slot to add extra storage once you fill the 16GB of on-board memory.
The silver aluminium and black leather combo looks seriously classy too.
There are currently no plans to bring the CM10 to the UK, but that’s what Panasonic said about the CM1, and that eventually arrived in limited numbers. It’s Japan-only for now, and should cost around ¥100,000, which is about £600.