It's official: this is what I want for Christmas. (As if ...)
From Brett's post Impressions of the 4S:
"If the only change Apple made to the [iPhone] 4S were the camera enhancements, that would be enough to make me want the 4S.
The conventional point and shoot camera is dead to me. It’s not so much the quality of the iPhone 4’s camera that I love, it’s the camera plus app plus internet experience the iPhone offers.
Maybe I’m overselling the iPhone’s camera, but remember that I’m the parent of a five-month-old. My iPhone is much more camera than phone… at this stage in my life.
Being able to constantly capture moments with my ever-changing son—no matter how mundane—and then instantly share them with distant family is an experience that a conventional camera can’t rival.
I still take high-res photos with my DSLR, but I bet 75 percent or more of the total pictures I’ve taken this year were taken with my iPhone. So, so many moments that would never have been captured, much less shared, with an “offline” camera.
Every second Apple can shave off of the camera’s time to first photo and time between shots is huge. The extra light sensitivity and crazy-wide-for-a-phone aperture (f/2.4!) will be seriously welcome, too."
My iPhone 3GS' camera is now very much worse than the latest one, and so the possibility of having that quality of camera in my pocket most of the time, means my bridge camera (between Compact and DSLR in size and quality) could go into semi- retirement. Better a few hundred pounds on a new multi-purpose device than a few more hundred pounds on a shiny new just-a-camera-that-isn't-going-to-be-on-me-much-of-the-time-anyway. (And I should get a GPS device that gives me readings with much better accuracy, not the rather broken 50m that I'm currently getting.)