It's such a pity the image quality is not quite up to the level of the Canon S45. ... Gotta draw my standards somewhere.
I agree about standards, but now that I finally have a DSLR, my compact digicam is suddenly not compact enough, and my new standards for a pocket camera are something like
- good prints at up to 8"x10", decent at up to a full standard inkjet printer page
- fits in a jacket pocket, and even a generously sized shirt pocket
- A good degree of control over aperture and shutter speed choices, but not necessarily by traditional direct manual exposure mode.
-3x optical zoom or more (or a huge amount of cropping ability!)
Small is easy, and 4MP (or even 3MP) with a good lens probably satisfies the first item.
Given the rather limited range of apertures and DOF choices on such cameras, I would be willing to give up even aperture priority and shutter priority, in favour of a combination of exposure compensation and some ability to shift the priority of the program mode, as with special modes for landscapes, high speed/action, portraits, etc.
The T1 does have exp. comp, and a bunch of "scene" modes that could be used to push the choice of aperture and shutter speed around, so is main defect for me is having a fixed focal length lens.
So the forthcoming W1 with 3x might be a good fit for me, if it is still a good fit for my pockets. I just noticed that it also has aperture and shutter priority modes too:
W1 announcement at DPReviewP. S. At this stage, I wish that every new digicam had at least a 2.5" LCD!