Kodak IM5 officially announced as the company’s first smartphone

The Kodak IM5 was officially unveiled at CES 2015 as the company’s first smartphone. The photographic film maker who was one known for its “Kodak moment” tagline has faced bankruptcy, business reorganization and has had to sell half a billion worth of patents to major tech players like Google, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, and HTC. Now it hopes to make a comeback in the smartphone game.

Kodak says that the IM5 is for “consumers who appreciate the value and heritage of the Kodak brand”, but the camera itself seems pretty standard in the modern smartphone landscape. Its clearly not meant to wow the user, and is rather a niche product aimed at brand loyal customers. Despite bearing the Kodak brand, the IM5 is actually manufactured by Bullitt, the company that manufactures CAT’s ruggedized smartphones.

The Kodak IM5 is a respectable, upper mid-range device, featuring a 5 inch display with a 720 x 1280 pixel resolution, 8GB of internal storage which can be expanded through microSD, a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, and an octa-core MediaTek MT6592 processor with 1GB of RAM.

The device showcased at CES 2015, comes with Android 4.4 KitKat, but Kodak promises an upgrade to Android 5.0 Lollipop later in the year. The IM5 comes with a customized user interface, which is aimed at new smartphone users. The handset even comes with its own (easier-to-use) app store alongside the standard Google Play Store.

The Kodak IM5 will retail for €229 when it launches in Europe at the end of the first quarter of 2015. After that, it will eventually make its way to the US where it will cost $249.

source - CNET