Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been a long-term loyal customer of Canon. So I hope someone in power can pass this onto the CEO of Canon and let them know my experience. I bought the R50 from B&H Photo before it was available on Amazon. I returned it. There are two major reasons I was unsatisfied. 1) I bought the R50 for the Wi-Fi capabilities such as viewing previously recorded pics/movies on my Samsung Tab 2014ed tablet. The Wi-Fi is absolute vaporware. It connects to my home router fine, but not my tablet or Galaxy S4. Once connected to my local router, my desktop of course cannot utilize it until a client is installed. (Why not provide an internal server-side web capability?). Canon does provide client software (see below for that horror story). Apparently Canon knows they have issues as evidenced by numerous internet sites. The way I understand it, if you have old Android devices, it might do something, but the newer Android devices can't be used. Again, Wi-Fi on the R50 does not work in many cases. 2) Sooooo, I plugged the USB cable into my desktop, and lo and behold, the internal memory and the external SD memory DOES NOT MAP as individual Windows drive(s) as many prior Canon cameras did (and most other cameras do). You can only access your recorded images using software provided by Canon or their outsourced partner (I forget the name). I couldn't even access these two memory(s) until I called Canon tech support. I spent over an hour with a tech. While on hold, I figured out how to access images via the Canon client (on Windows). It was non-intuitive. But the fun was just beginning; It gets worse. Digression; The R50 has 8GB internal memory (R52, 32GB internal) and a SD slot to hold up to 64GB (user added) SD memory chip. I am not certain the R50 is an Android based system, but the problem of switching between internal and external SD memory is manual, and Canon should make the two separate memory(s) a consistent, seamless interface and record all recorded images using available memory based on a priority and warn the user of automatic switching if capacity is exceeded. To switch between the two memories is a painful process using the touch screen. I call this problem the IXMPITA dilemma (Internal-External Memory Pain In The A** dilemma; see below). Vendors should create an easier to use environment when their product is a single purpose device such as a camera. Okay the real pain. The Windows software clients come in two parts. One for pictures and MP4s and a separate client for the AVCHD movies. No single client for complete content access. But they replicated the IXMPITA dilemma, in BOTH of these clients you must select internal or external memory SEPARATELY! Why would a Windows programmer not just open both and eliminate the user selection of internal-external selection? You might not agree with this observation until I tell you about SLOWNESS. OMG. The Windows-based clients delivered by Canon and their outsourced partner absolutely suck. One last observation on the Windows clients; If you use these clients on a regular basis, you'll remember how to use them; But if you use them every two months or less, well, you better write down notes to yourself to remind you how to use them. So the Wi-Fi doesn't work and the USB connection is hard to use, the clients are clumsy and very slow. Oh, I forgot say, the pic/movies recorded are absolutely GREAT!!!! Canon did a great job on the optical/camera side AFAIK. On the software side, its sad to see Canon outsource a critically important core-competency aspect of their technology. Having worked in IT for a long time, I can see through the software aspect (inside the camera, and the external client software), and know they are suffering because the various engineering teams either are not working together or are prevented from creating a superior solution that will define their products from the competition. Hope this helps you be prepared.