I think it’s a scale thing. The market for those devices exists but it’s not big enough to justify the investment.
As others have mentioned, lack of geotagging, wireless connectivity, and other convenience features made them poor competitors to smartphones. And it wasn't just wireless connectivity being behind the times, Canon's T7i (aka 800D) launched in 2017 still made you find a mini USB cable. They were good at optics, but dropped the ball on the rest of the product.
Even though the phone had worse quality pictures, it brought many other things to the table.
Even when discussing just the on-camera UI, there's nothing about "tools for professionals" that says they must never change the UI, or that every setting must be immediately accessible in a flat hierarchy, or that you must use a one-axis scroll wheel to change a 2D focus point, etc.
Yes, it's a great thing that there are features of a standalone camera (like instant on, or physical buttons) that smartphones don't have. However, that doesn't mean the cameras have to disregard all the UX and UI changes other electronics have gone through over the last 10-20 years (some good, some bad, but over the long term they've become more approachable to more people). Meanwhile cameras remained largely unchanged and as a result DSLRs are pretty much a dead segment now. (I too loved the viewfinder and ability to use them without an screen, especially when optical... but not the rest of the experience).
As a former amateur photographer, I eventually sold all my bodies and lenses because it was just such a pain to use them compared to the smartphones and prosumer prime compacts of the day, which were all iterating much faster than the "proper" DSLRs. Back in those days, even just getting the photos off the camera wirelessly was a pain, requiring the use of 3rd-party WiFi SD cards or really old USB cables. I think these days mirrorless is once again trying new things, but I'm out of the hobby now and can't afford to reinvest into it :(
Well, the person upthread did say "I don't think any of the camera manufacturers have good UX people" (emphasis mine) and the kitchen appliance companies don't either
The menu hierarchy isn't flat.
Physical knobs for everything, even customizable. Touch to focus (though I prefer using the ring tbh).
BT/WiFi transfer. A bit slow (2-3 sec for a 50mb raw photo) but fine for what I need. I use a USB-c SD reader for my phone and sync the entire card to an SD card in my smartphone.
Full size HDMI built in.
I don't think I would say that cameras are dead, it's just that it's a hobbyist thing now. Most of my friends would never buy a camera except a cheapy one like an Instax for fun, they're not dropping a grand on an f1.4 35mm.
Can I ask how your experience with the electronic viewfinder has been? Is it as fast and clear as a traditional dSLR's optical viewfinder?
You can tell that it is a screen because of the HUD etc but it doesn't "feel" like one in practice.
I hear that the newer ones are better still.
If you go to a camera shop they should let you try it, that's how I went for mine.
It was sort of an insane jump but I'm having an amazing experience.
I told the wife I'd take very nice photos of a kid to try to justify the cost.
The glass alone can be $750- 1-3k. I'm borrowing glass rn.
Check out the sonyalpha subreddit to see what people are doing with it
"They sell tools not toys" - no offense, I hate deceptive UX engineering and e14n as the next guy - and vibration motors in Dyson vacuums - but that kinds of denials existed, and IMO had hamstrung Japanese tech products for too long.
"Piddly old wifi" is part of the problem, it's certainly what I'd expect camera vendors to support. You can push multiple gigabits over a good wifi connection these days.
If any camera companies are reading this, you probably read "I wish my camera came with a purpose-built app specific to your brand of cameras manufactured in 2024 (to be EOLed and replaced by a different app next year) and reimplementing an entire photo library with sync to your own subscription services because your manager says you need subscription revenue," but no I'd just like it to join my house's wifi network and give me a button on the computer to copy the files to a folder or add them to my Photos library.
Most people with DSLR’s or mirrorless are working with around 3lbs even with a lens.
This seems like the kind of thing that a single, dedicated hacker could crack wide open.
The pieces are all commodity, no? People can buy lenses independently, so you don't have to design those. Everything else should be COTS--processor, networking/cellular, display, etc.
It might not be super cheap, but it shouldn't exceed $500 on the BOM. And then people can iterate on it over time.