I just briefly checked out this new camera, which was only announced at the beginning of September. Love it.
The odd shape makes it much easier to grab than most other small digital cameras. This little machine felt very snappy. The screen was big, bright and lively. The rotating switch is easy to use. It is also weather-proof. At HK$2,800 (comes w/ a 128MB xD card at the shop where I saw it) it isn’t terribly expensive either. Oh it even comes in black (althou I didn’t see any black ones available).
With any camera, no matter how good it is, there are usually at least a couple of design compromises. This one is no exception. It doesn’t do manual focus, so you can’t do the set-it-at-2m-and-approach-the-object trick, which might break the deal w/ some of the street photographers I know. The lens is slightly slower at f3.5. There is no optical viewfinder, so if it isn’t possible to switch off the LCD screen then we might have a very power-hungry camera here (the announcement made no mention of the battery life), not to mention losing the non-intrusive character of a snapshot camera.
Now that I have written the previous paragraph I feel like the dirty critic who hates everything. I am off to fondling my Konica Hexar.
Update (3/10): Grabbed a copy of the product pamphlet yesterday. The Li ion battery only has juice for this camera to take about 100 shots.