When I saw the Vodafone-branded, Android-based HTC Magic in the MWC coverage, I presumed it would be picked up fairly quickly by Vodafone here in New Zealand. Paul Brislen comments today in the Herald:

New Zealand will be part of the ’second phase’ of Vodafone’s Magic release Brislen said.

It could be on the market here as early as May.

I’m pretty excited about this. The new GPhone seems to have improved on the original, and is getting good reviews.

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I have in my possession three quite sexy little camcorders. I?ll be reviewing them in the coming weeks, finishing up with a slot on Breakfast on the 25th.

Stay tuned for details on these:

• Canon HF11
• Panasonic TM-200
• Sony HDR-XR200

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Finally someone in the point-and-shoot camera business is fronting up with some better sensor technology, rather than just adding Megapixels.

The FujiFilm FinePix F200EXR has a bunch of the regular point-and-shoot features, but the ones that really gets me going are the Pixel Fusion and Dual Capture modes:

Pixel Fusion Mode (High Sensitivity and Low Noise), which caps two adjacent pixels together to produce six million large photodiodes, which are big enough to absorb light in the darkest of conditions, to produce low-light shots of extraordinary quality with minimal noise and grain; and

Dual Capture (Wide Dynamic Range), which captures different exposures with two sets of six million pixels, which, when combined, gives an excellent level of detail in highlights and low lights that would otherwise be lost.

You see, one of the reasons (among MANY others) that the Canon EOS 5D MkII is so much better in low light than many other cameras, is the sheer size of the pixels on its sensor.

Compare 20 Megapixels on the 5D?s giant 24×36mm full-frame sensor to 14MP on a modern 6×4.5mm point-and-shoot sensor and you don?t have to be a genius to realise that the pixels on a point-and-shoot are just tiny. If you think of the pixels as little buckets that can fill up with light, then it?s pretty obvious that the average point-and-shoot?s pixel cup is always runneth-ing over. Hence noise, grain, and blur when you try to take low-light shots.

Of course we don?t know how well Pixel Fusion Mode will play out in the real world, and a point and shoot will never capture light the way a big aperture DSLR can. But it warms my cockles to finally read that this massive megapixel race might finally be changing.

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In a surprise move, Apple has announced that they will not be exhibiting at Macworld after 2009.

CUPERTINO, California?December 16, 2008?Apple? today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple?s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year?s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple?s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco?s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple?s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Not only are they bowing out, but Phil Schiller, not Steve Jobs, will be doing the keynote. I can only presume that this is part of the succession plan for Jobs.

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Popphoto.com confirms my amateur gut-feel with a more detailed, scientific review, and comes to the conclusion that the new 5D is the shizzle.

And the vast amount of detail that goes along with 21.1MP, as well as the sophisticated image processing served up by its new DIGIC 4 engine, cannot be understated — it’s a wow! The low-light image quality is almost life-changing.

So there you have it. Thankfully my drooling and fawning on TVNZ Breakfast this morning has been backed up by a real review!

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