"Smartphones have punched a hole in many product categories, not the least of which is the simple pocket digital camera. Still, one category of pocket digital camera that's not withered is the pocket long zoom, or travel zoom, and and quite a few players have joined the category in the last few years. As ubiquitous as they are, smartphone cameras can't pretend to zoom to even 3x optically, let alone compete with the 12-18x optical zooms we've gathered for our Travel-Zoom Shootout.
Whether on a short trip or long vacation, a pocket long zoom can handle nearly all types of family and tourist photography, bringing in far objects with a quick flick of the zoom ring. And recent offerings also start out quite a bit wider than models past, ranging from 24 to 28 at their widest."
P.S The new, Serious and more business conscious Ken Rockwell appears to have changed the wording, the context, heck, everything in his review of this camera. It is no longer "less responsive than his kids toys", and not worse of all Nikon DSLRs ever made. It (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II) is now better than any Nikon at almost everything, and overall, one of the best cameras ever made. Go figure. Quote of his old review, and our comment at the bottom of this post.
Will Canon ever release a compact camera system? Yes, they pretty much have to. In the meantime they stuffed an aps-c sensor in some oversized g12ish body, and came up with this:
"Shots taken at high ISO settings were consistently clean and noise-free up to
Stuff-Review has made a nice little chart that pits the newcomer against the almost established crowd. That's all pretty theoretical though, since 3 of the 4 cameras are practically not available in the majority of the western world: