Smartphones, Smart Tablets, Smart Watches, Smart Cameras – looks like the whole gadget world is turning smart. Most of the smart gadgets in the market now sport high-resolution and feature-filled cameras. So LG’s decision to come out with a pocket printer for these smart gadgets is certainly laudable.
The LG Pocket Photo printer can reproduce 50 x 76mm (approximately 2 x 3”) prints on a special inkless paper. The device can be paired with all Android and iOS devices using Bluetooth or NFC. Before this, you have to download the LG Pocket Photo App on your device via Play Store/Android Market. The App allows you to connect your device with the printer. Clicking on the ‘Print’ button will initiate the transfer of images and the printer will start printing the image. The app provides four customisation options—Auto Exposure (corrects colour in the image), Paper Full (prints without white space), Image Full (print full image irrespective of the dimensions), and Auto Power Off (set the power off time).
The Pocket Photo prints on custom photo paper made by ZINK for LG. Zink (which stands for Zero INK) is a U.S.-based manufacturer of thermal printers and media. The packet of ZINK papers contains a Smart Sheet that has to be inserted at the bottom of the paper stack. After inserting the Smart Sheet and the pack of photo papers (a pack contains 10 sheets), you are ready to print. The Smart Sheet cleans the print head and calibrates the colours. The photo papers contain Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow dye crystals known as Amorphochromic crystals. When heated to very high temperatures, the colours appear and become permanent on cooling down. The only drawback we found is that the colours are not very contrasty, probably due to the inability to produce photo black colour (generally associated with CMY-printers). Otherwise, the printer could be a great investment, especially if you want to print business card-sized images in an emergency.
For details, visit http://www.lg.com/in/pocket-photo-printer.
Sujith Gopinath