Originally posted by Jasvox I haven't seen a phone camera yet which surpasses or much less can keep up with a decent P&S...especially the LX3 which was mentioned in the story. What a load of rubbish.
Jason
It's true that they're far from the LX3/LX5 type cameras. But that's not what most people buy. And the fact is that the new phones are quite good in good light and when you don't need a zoom. Here's one from my iPhone 4:
It even gives P&S-like quality in low light (i.e. still hopelessly noisy, but not really worse than a budget P&S camera). My W10 is now reserved for heavy rain and underwater use only.
The main limitation of my iPhone 4 is the wide angle lens without zoom. I still think there's a market for P&S with powerful zoom lenses (and MILC cameras loses much of their advantage to DSLRs here - they really shine when you use the moderate zooms or better, the pancakes) and also underwater cameras (but why doesn't Apple or somebody make an iPhone W in cooperation with Pentax?).
I think Pentax has hugely improved on their P&S offering with their newest cameras. They are now covering these last bastions of P&S quite well with the X90, the RZ10 and the W90. The RS1000 is more of a wildcard - I wonder how well that sells?