What do you plan to do with you M gear?

Option 1 is the clear choice for me.

I’m an “average amateur” who had SLRs decades ago, then found ELPH/PowerShot to be a good choice (I had an original Digital ELPH), and then a few years ago decided to get back into the ILC world with the Canon M system, which was perfect for me because of size and cost.

I have an M6II and and an M5, along with more than enough lenses for them (due partly to GAS). This camera system and lenses exceeds my abilities and needs, but I really would like a body that combines the capabilities of the M6II along with the build-in EVF of the M5, like many others have wanted. If Canon comes out with such a product, they have my money, but otherwise I’m “full up”.

I’ll never buy into the R system because it’s too big and too expensive, and I’m not going to switch brands just for some little differences.

My wife is like so many others who gave up using a camera and now just uses her smartphone as her camera. She is not much of a photographer and has zero training in the practice, but she often times gets pictures that I didn’t because she has her “camera” with her all the time and doesn’t spend any time messing around with different lenses and camera settings - she just “shoots”.

So I’m pretty sure that I will continue to use my M equipment for the rest of its useful life, and perhaps long before then I’ll have an iPhone that does even better and that I will have with me all the time.

People can scoff at this line of reasoning, thinking that the tiny optics of a smartphone could never replace a “real” full-frame ILC camera, but if we look at another technology, that of computers, there was once a time when the PC was considered merely a “toy” that could never challenge the vaunted mainframe computer, but now mainframes and minicomputers have pretty much been supplanted by the technology that was once the little PC. Little technologies grow upward; big ones never grow downward.