Better camera quality than what the iPhone 4 has to offer but not quite a DSLR, Panasonic’s new Lumix DMC-FH7 will be going for $179.99 later next month. This point and shoot boasts a 3″ Smart Touch Screen where the user can take advantage of Touch Auto Focus (AF), Touch Zoom, Touch Shutter and Intelligent Scene Selector. If this touch screen is as intuitive as the GH2 and the GF2, commanding controls are quick and easy.

Editing out bad skin, turning rotten teeth to pure white magic, before this was only possible in post on your computer. Now, with a single touch of a finger you can make edits of your shots on the digital camera itself. Beauty Retouch that lets you retouch faces and Esthetic will create effects on faces. The Makeup feature allows you color options such as foundation, eye-shadow or coloring for the lips and cheeks. This is slightly frightening, but I’m interested in seeing how it turns out. I’m guessing clown or drag queen but we’ll have to wait to determine that.

The DMC-FH7 sports a Leica DC lens capable of an impressive 4x optical zoom and shooting high definition video at 1280 x 720p resolution at 24 fps with Panasonic’s iA technology making the entire process pretty simple.

The Lumix image uploader, you are able to share your recently taken photos over Facebook, while video can be uploaded to YouTube directly with the camera connected to your computer. After all, what good would a camera be these days if it wasn’t able to download directly to the most popular social networks? This isn’t a useless Blackberry here, folks.

Panasonic’s Venus Engine VI image processor is also smart enough to automatically detect outlines, detailed texture areas and soft gradation which results in naturally clear images. This camera has a super-fast response time, with a shutter release time lag that is incredibly quick at approximately 0.006 seconds. This little digital camera is a beast! All black everything is what Panasonic is releasing, so deal with it.