This smartphone printer could become your new favorite gadget

droPrinter can be seen on the left, with on of its prints on the right. / © droPrinter

“Actually, our 'enemy' is not Polaroid. Photo is only a very small part of droPrinter,” said Fizo, adding “the Polaroid camera is an expert in Photo-Printing. But the smartphone is not only a camera, the smartphone is whole new portable computing device”

This is one of the key areas where droPrinter differs from similar products — it can be used to print notes, messages, emails, even entire webpages, easily and cost-effectively. “No matter what is displayed [on your phone], it can be printed,” says Fizo, noting that droPrinter "could even be used as a second screen for phone.”

The droPrinter is said to keep the printing cost low, and the output high. / © droPrinter

droPrinter is said to be able to print continuously for around 7 hours. Compare that to a smartphone photo printer like the Polaroid Zip, which can produce around 25 sheets per-charge, and you can see how it appears like the more efficient product, even if it doesn’t house the same quality.

In addition, the ZINC paper used by Polaroid can cost between 10 and 15 dollars for 20-30 sheets, droPrinter's prints cost around “one or two cents per photo,” says Fizo. 

The droPrinter does come with some limitations however. droPrinter is small, printing on paper at about 58 mm in black and white. This means images are returned at about 5 cm in width. When asked about the quality of these photos, Fizo said that that images printed when the device is below “20 percent charge” would suffer, but above that the images would remain consistently high quality.

droPrinter has been successfully "Kickstarted", but you can still pre-order it. / © droPrinter

It seems like droPrinter’s ambitions as a second smartphone screen may usurp its appeal as a photo printer, in the end. On such a small scale, it won’t be able to compete in quality with the larger color printers. But it maybe it will be able to offer something more interesting.

Fizo said the intention is not just to make droPrinter more than just a simple printer for photos. “Customers just use the printer [...] other developers can make it an amazing printer”.  

The droPrinter team is making its Android API available to other devs to get their hands on it and integrate it further with their own apps, which would open up the droPrinter’s possibilities further. Where this might lead, is in their hands, but I can’t deny I’d appreciate an easier way to print flight tickets.  

droPrinter has already been successfully Kickstarted, and the product is expected to ship early next year for around 99 USD (though Fizo said the best time would of course be “before Christmas”: if that’s possible, it looks like an earlier release could happen).

We’ll be getting our hands on a droPrinter hopefully sometime before the end of 2015. Check out its Kickstarter page if you’re interested in supporting the project, and you can pre-order one at the discounted price of 65 USD.  

What are your thoughts on droPrinter? Let us know in the comments below.