Canon has announced what it says is its most advanced touchscreen IXUS - the new IXUS 210. 

As well as navigate menu icons, the IXUS 210's 3.5-inch screen offers touch-to-focus functionality, image rotation, and finger swiping browsing through pics, while "Active Display" lets users browse through images by "tapping the sides of the camera".

The new compact gets a DIGIC 4 processor, 14.1-megapixel image sensor, a wide-angle 24mm Canon lens with 5x optical zoom, 720p video capture with easy YouTube uploads via the supplied software, an HDMI port, and a "sculpted metal exterior" finished in black, gold, silver or pink.

Features include image stabilisation, 22 scene modes, "Smart Flash Exposure", face detection that works for up to 35 faces and a fish-eye effect.

Worthy of special mention is a new "Smile Shutter" mode that uses face detection tech that means the user can trigger the shutter and take the pic with a smile, or with the "Wink Self-Timer", a wink of an eye which sounds like great fun, if it works.

With support for SDXC storage cards, offering up to 2TB of storage capacity, the Canon IXUS 210 will go on sale in March this year, priced at the £350 mark.

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