Sony Cybershot H7

The next iteration of Sony's high end ultra-zoomers: the H7 is finally anounced, and will be released on Apr 27 in Japan.

The first that I thought when seeing this is: "Now, maybe the H5 would finally have a price drop, guess it's time to fetch up the H5." But then, I went on to see what's different in this upgrade:

• 7.1 mega pixels upped to 8.2
• 12x optical zoom bumped up to 15x
• 3 inch LCD shrinked to 2,5 inch (that means less power use)
• Support for hi-def picture output to the new hi-def flat screen TVs
• Cool eye candy in the newly designed menus (Looks like the "cross-media bar" XMB interface used on the PSP and PS3)
• Human face recognizer for better focusing and anti red-eye
  

And also, here's what really matters:

• They changed the jog-dial from under the shutter button (the place that I prefer) to be a wheel around the 5 way directional pad (placing it here interferes with my steady gripping of the camera)
• A new image processor (Bionz, the same one as on the A100 DSLR) that consumes less power
• A new IR remote control is included with the H7!
  
• And the 2 AA Ni-MH batteries are exchanged for a Lithium battery pack (Yeah! I've been waiting for that for years on the H series!).

Hmm. I like the H5 really much, but the H7 seems better with the battery pack. But then again, the H5 is still a little too expensive. OK, so if the H7 is priced at 17000NTD, there's no way I would buy it. If the H5 dropped from 15900NTD to 12000NTD, then I'm definitely going to pick it up.
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After note:
I then realized that there is also a H9 to be released later, and the H7 is to be placed at the price point of the discontinued H2: about 13000~14000NTD, which is lower then the H5's original price. Hm... Maybe I should wait for the H7 if the H5 doesn't have a significant price drop.

But really, if I do get a new camera, I'd need a camera pack, another memory stick (maybe 2 gig?) and a spear battery, and these would likely bump the total cost to 20000NTD. To think of my salary for being a TA this semester is only 30000NTD, that really sucks.