Printer Industry Blog » mobile

Epson’s App for Direct Printing from Android Devices

Stan Retner — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:34:34 +0000

It’s been or almost a year that Epson offers the PrintJinni application for iOS devices, which allows users of these smartphones to print photographs and other information via their handheld assistants. Finally, the company offered a similar application that allows direct printing from mobile devices to owners of Android smartphones and tablets. It’s called Epson iPrint.

Having installed the Epson iPrint, users can perform printing to any Epson printer or multifunction supporting a wireless connection. In addition to regular printing documents and photos from smartphone, the application also allows printing with cloud services such as Box.net, Dropbox and Evernote. Users can also print Web pages and change the print settings from the application.

Advanced settings include the ability to select and enqueue multiple photos at once. Supported is the borderless photo printing from the phone. Users can also select different type of image resolution and optimize printing quality. The application is now available for download in the Android Market.

Bolle BP-10 – Compact Photo Printer for iPhone

Stan Retner — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:15:26 +0000

At first glance it seems that what you see on the picture below is another docking station for Apple devices. It is not so, and actually is much more interesting than that. Bolle BP-10 is a small printer designed to print photos up to 4×6 inches.

Built in the traditional Apple design, the cube printer boasts a full four-color printing and an interesting mechanism for the process of making pictures. BP-10 applies one color at a time, then shows the result to user and “swallows” the page for the next run. The quality of printing this device offer is very decent level, but the cost of BP-10 can scare customers away. Not everyone would agree to pay £120 ($190) for a printer, even such interesting as this.

Polaroid PoGo Mobile Printer Review

Stan Retner — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:13:23 +0000

Anybody who has ever used a Polaroid Instant camera will know how convenient it was to have a picture immediately after taking it to show to your friends or as a record of an event. While it’s still very easy to take instant photos in a social setting, typically with a camera phone, a paper copy is harder, ironically, since the demise of Polaroid’s instant film cameras.

As some recompense, Polaroid is the first company to introduce a printer based on ZINK Imaging’s new technology. ZINK, which stands for Zero INK, uses no inks, ribbons or coated films. Instead, all the technology needed to produce a full-colour print is held in three layers of transparent crystals, coated on the ZINK paper. A thermal print head sends pulses through the layers to heat the appropriate set of crystals and produce a colour image.

The small, black and silver printer is easily pocketable and comes in slightly smaller in volume than the power supply used to recharge its Li-ion battery. It has a type one USB socket on the side to take a PictBridge cable from a camera and the only control is a power button. A pair of three-colour LEDs show charge and power status, and prints feed out from a narrow slot in one end of the printer

Installation and set up could hardly be easier. A catch on the end of the PoGo releases a spring-loaded lid and 10 sheets of ZINK paper fit into a recess in its body. Clip the lid shut again, and it’s ready to print. There’s no software, as this printer doesn’t work with PCs; only with cameras and mobile phones. The phone connection is via Bluetooth, and all you need to set that up is the printer’s pin, which the phone requests before completing the link.

While there’s no doubt that the PoGo printer is extremely convenient and easy-to-use, the ZINK technology is not at a stage where you’re going to see good images. Give it some more development and another couple of generations and it might get somewhere near the standard of the old Polaroid instant photos.

ZINK licenses its technology to Polaroid, but this isn’t an exclusive licence and other manufacturers are known to be working on cameras and laptops with built-in ZINK-based printers. We’d like to see larger prints, at least up to the size of old Polaroid instant prints, and fervently hope the next generation of the print technology will offer greater detail in the images it produced.

However, if you want a printer that’s immediately fun as a talking point, and one that produces expensive, business card-sized prints you can stick on your friends, the PoGo is ideal.

HP OfficeJet H470b, World Fastest Mobile Printer

Stan Retner — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:17:43 +0000

HP introduces the world’s fastest mobile printer (based on the published specifications), the HP OfficeJet H470b.

As any decent mobile printer, the OfficeJet H470b supports optional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The printer is compatible to numerous operational systems such as Windows, Macintosh, Palm, Tablet PC, Pocket PC, and Symbian.

The printer work well without a PC, just connect it your notebook, PDA, digital camera, cell phone, or even memory cards and go print!

With the HP OfficeJet H470b Mobile Printer, you can get your documents and graphics at fastest-in-class speeds of up to 22 pagers per minute in black and 18 ppm in color, which is a lot for a mobile printer.

The long-lasting Lithium-Ion battery enables the printer to deliver up to 480 pages per charge. You can also use your car’s power by using the 12v auto power adapter.

The OfficeJet H470b is very light to carry around, it weigh only 5 lbs, yet it’s durable. Don’t be afraid of dropping it by a coincidence — the printer is drop-tested from heights of up to 0.5 meters.