xhosa machiavelli: Canon PowerShot S110 packs WiFi and touch-enabled display (hands-on video)

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Canon PowerShot S110 packs WiFi and touch-enabled display (hands-on video)

It seems like just yesterday that Canon announced its top-of-the-line PowerShot S100, and now the company is back to demo its brand new S110. This latest point-and-shoot flagship features a very similar body size and design, but adds WiFi functionality, enabling you to interface with a smartphone app to upload pictures and tag your images using your mobile's GPS (interestingly, GPS no longer comes built-in). Spec-wise, the camera's packing a 12.1-megapixel, 1/1.7-inch CMOS sensor and an f/2.0-5.9, 24-120mm lens. It also offers an ISO range of 80-12,800, and includes a 460k-dot 3-inch LCD with touch functionality, letting you tap your way through menus instead of using the hardware controls (which, thankfully, are also still available). The S110 is still very much a premium product, with a solid metal construction and a $450 price tag to match.

We went hands-on with both the black and white versions of the S110 at Photokina today, and were quite pleased with the design. The black version includes a matte black finish with a slightly rougher feel, which we preferred over the white's smooth, glossy paint job. Both cameras feel solid, and are clearly still pocketable. The display was bright and vibrant, and the touchscreen responded as expected -- we can't say it'll be our first pick when it comes to navigation, but it does allow for some useful shortcuts. We weren't able to shoot with the S110, but it does offer RAW captures, along with 1080/24p video shooting and an impressive 10 fps burst mode. It's set to hit stores beginning next month -- as always, you'll find hands-on photos below and a video walkthrough just past the break.

Gallery: Canon PowerShot S110 hands-on