Olympus E-PL2 Rumored To Show At 2011 CES

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The rumor mill is working frantically with the early word about stuff that’s expected to show up out at the CES show next month, and one of the many big ones emerging is a word about the successor to the monster camera pictured below. The early word suggests that the Olympus E-PL2 will be hitting the CES show, and from the sounds of things, it’s going to be another really impressive piece from Olympus.

The E-PL2 is set to boast a 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 MSC kit lens, a  three inch LCD screen (though from the sounds of it, not specifically a touch screen), a “direct movie” button, a set of new art filters, and, oddly enough, the “Penpal” system, which is being described as “an external Bluetooth module”.

What Penpal is apparently set to do is work with Android devices and those few Windows Phone 7 devices so far, and let you upload pictures from the E-PL2 directly to Flickr or Facebook via those phones.  This may well be one of the best moves I’ve heard yet for automatic wireless uploading; some have tried wedging 3G chips in there, but that actually makes a bit less sense than the whole thing’s worth. Why not just let the phone do the heavy lifting? Of course, from the sounds of it, iPhone users might be out in the cold on this one, which makes less sense than the 3G chip, but considering how many Android devices (and probably Windows 7 devices will be too) are also Wi-Fi enabled, it does sort of take the trouble out of things. Let cameras take pictures, and let phones handle the communications.

There’s no word yet as to the price structures here, but the word is that these will not only show at CES, but also hit stores not long after, by February.