I need a new compact camera because the one on my phone is pretty useless and produces grainy images. I don’t blame it – it’s a phone and “smart” though it may be, it’s not designed to be a camera, unlike my D-SLR, which obviously is. If I had two of them and tied a piece of string around both, they might work as a primitive phone, rather like baked bean cans. But it would be rubbish.
Gadgets can come in handy: I have been caught out battery-less with a proper camera on site and have had to rely on my smart phone. But sometimes they try to cram too many features into things. I once read that on average, people only use 25% of a gadget’s features and 42.9% of statistics are made up. (Ah, that old chestnut…) Seriously though, the trouble with having all gadgets combined into one is that you inevitably suffer a loss in quality. A 10-in-one super-gadget can never be as good as 10 devices individually. What if you took 10 devices and stuck them together? You’d have a very expensive, very heavy lump of metal and plastic… enough said.
A few years ago my brother kindly gave me a £50 voucher for a well-known highstreet camera retailer. (Jess.. [cough-cough]…ps – That’ll be £100 off my next purchase, please…) The problem with these highstreet retailers is that the price tag is probably £50 higher than on the internet so you’re no better off. How these shops survive is a mystery to me. The only good use I have found for them is to “try” before you buy (but not from them). You get to feel the build quality, weight and ergonomics before you buy online.