is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
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Canon seems to be riding the TikTok digicam resurgence and is rereleasing a mid-2010s point-and-shoot — the PowerShot Elph 360 HS A. It’s mostly the same camera as the original Elph 360 HS, first launched in the very different world of 2016 and recently anointed the darling pocket camera of celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Dua Lipa.
Now, in 2025, the “A” version of the PowerShot still has the same 20.2-megapixel CMOS sensor, Digic IV Plus processor, 12x optical zoom, 1080p video, and USB Mini port of the nine-year-old throwback. (Nope, no USB-C.) But the new model now costs $379 instead of the original’s $210, and it makes the switch to microSD cards instead of full-size SD.
The downsizing of features doesn’t end with storage formats. The new Elph incarnation doesn’t support Wi-Fi image transfers to a PC or direct printing via Wi-Fi like the original (though I’m skeptical many people were doing that). And there’s no longer a purple color, as the new Elph 360 HS A will only come in black or silver when it launches in late October.
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1 / 3 This is as colorful as this camera gets, since the purple one is now long gone. Image: Canon
The jump in price while downsizing in features sounds baffling at first. But the rising popularity of point-and-shoot cameras among younger folks and the trend of celebs being spotted using the original model has fueled a viral interest in the 360 HS. Canon never seemed to truly discontinue the original model, until now that the “A” is replacing it. The aging version can still occasionally be found at retailers, but often for hefty markups.
Authorized Canon dealer B&H Photo maintains a listing for it, priced at $359.99, though it’s currently “temporarily out of stock.” A live chat sales rep for B&H told me the store last received a shipment on August 14th, but much like with my colleague Allison Johnson’s efforts to procure a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III earlier this year, these “drops” get quickly snatched up.
As much as I find the digicam trend endearing (I think it’s fun for young people to explore new-old creative avenues and breathe fresh life into outdated tech), it will be interesting to see a big company like Canon try to meet this viral moment. I usually feel that once the suits catch wind of these things and want to cash in, it’s time to pack it up and move on to the next cool thing. The digicam trend may still last a while longer, but what happens if Canon makes enough of the new 360 HS A cameras that they’re readily available at MSRP? Will the interest remain if the camera is no longer a hard-to-get flex for online clout, like a Labubu?
What’s an Elph? Does it have pointy ears? The PowerShot Elph 360 HS was released as the Ixus 285 HS in Europe and Ixy 650 in Japan. Canon has often given its consumer cameras different names in different regions. For example, the older Canon EOS SLRs were branded EOS Rebel / Digital Rebel in the US, while they had just alphanumeric names in Europe and were known as Kiss / Kiss Digital in Japan.