Panasonic launches Android phone with 1-inch camera sensor; would you like to see Sony do the same?

Panasonic today announced the Lumix Smart Camera CM1 at Photokina 2014. This is an Android smartphone that is armed with a 1-inch camera sensor and for all intents and purposes looks like a camera first and smartphone second. The 1-inch sensor along with the inclusion of an extendable lens (for focus, not zoom) leads to a reasonably chunky chassis (21.1mm thickness), at least compared to current smartphones.

The CM1 comes with a 1-inch 20MP sensor with f/2.8 Leica lens. It is capable off 4K video recording albeit only at 15fps. Other specs include a 4.7-inch 1080p screen, Snapdragon 801 chipset (MSM8974-AB) with 2.3GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 2600mAh battery, 16GB internal storage and microSD memory card. The device won’t be cheap though, with an expected price point of €899 when it launches in November in France and Germany.

The question we have for you today is seeing the above specs and the design in the pictures below, would you like to see something similar from Sony? Sometimes people float very fanciful specs about what they would like to see in a future Xperia device, especially on the camera side. However, you can’t cheat physics and if you’re looking for a great camera phone, then you will have to accept a thicker handset in most likelihood. We’d love to hear your thoughts below.

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