Mobile phones mean instant communication. And camera phones offer instant sharing of photos with multimedia messaging to other phones, to the Web, and to PCs.
And now the Polaroid PoGo portable printer offers instant (OK, one-minute) photo printing, wirelessly from cell phones (through Bluetooth) or directly from digital cameras (over USB) -- for around $149.
The PoGo (Polaroid-on-the-Go) is definitely portable --palm sized (0.93 x 2.83 x 4.72 inches), and weighing 8 pounds. It's powered by a rechargeable (and replaceable) lithium-ion battery, providing 15 prints per charge.
Not surprisingly, the PoGo prints small prints -- 2 x 3 inches, like a business card. The magic here is the ZINK (Zero-Ink) printing technology. There's no ink cartridges or ribbons; instead the paper uses heat-activated dye crystals that create prints that are durable, smudge-proof, water-resistant, and fade-resistant.
It holds around 10 photo sheets at a time. The ZINK Photo Paper is sold in 10-packs for around $4 and 30-packs for $10, or some 33 to 40 cents per print.
(Note the PoGo is not a PC printer -- It does not connect directly to a computer, although you can print to it from a PC over Bluetooth, with the appropriate drivers.)
This is obviously not a high-end printer -- Polaroid describes the prints as equivalent to 300 dpi, matching images around 2 to 3 megapixels. Soft and fuzzy photos from camera phones looked dull, but sharper and higher-res images from a digital camera looked pretty good, although you can clearly see the color blocks under a magnifying glass.
So the PoGo is a fun and easy to use portable printer for quickly sharing photos on the go that would otherwise be locked inside your camera phone or digital camera. The paper actually has a peel-off sticky back, so you even can make instant photo stickers.
See my Digital Cameras Gallery for details on this and related products.
Find the Polaroid PoGo Photo Printer on Amazon.com