Plus you don’t get to check out the phone before you buy it. Plus, most of those phone are made my major companies, just not for sale in the U.S. So it would probably cost extra regardless.
I think in the end, most consumers would prefer a great smartphone with an okay camera than an okay smartphone with a great camera.
Eeeh… ISTM that part is sort of “chicken v. egg”. When I can foresee being in a situation where I will want to take pictures I want to see in full format or HD (travel, outdoor recreation, class reunion), I will bring an actual dedicated camera to begin with.
There is an apparent assumption that the “smartphone with really good camera” hasn’t really been tried out in the market. But what I see is that the market is for smartphones with good information/comms features and if they show up with so-so cameras, that’s good enough for the bulk of consumers. MFDs are all about compromises.
Quoth JoelUpchurch:
It’s not so much a matter of weight as of bulk. A good camera needs to have a long optical path and a larger lens, which in practice means that the lens needs to protrude out from the body of the camera. Yeah, there are point-and-clicks that don’t, but those have about the same quality as smartphones. If you make an actually decent camera, it won’t fit into your pocket like a smartphone does, and you’ve got an entirely different sort of device.
It turns out that I’m wrong. The Nokia N8 is making the Smartphone bestseller lists in spite of note being available from any of the top cellular providers in the US.
http://techreuters.com/2011/05/best-selling-smartphones/
It looks like there is a market for a camera centric smartphone.
When you look at the N8 it isn’t that thicker than other smartphone and actually thinner than some phones with slide out keyboards.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/14/nokia-n8-review/
Of course, the iPhone has a huge advantage is the huge number of camera apps you can buy for it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/technology/personaltech/28pogue.html