Polaroid has partnered with Zink to produce the Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer, seen at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
In 2007, we discovered the Zink printing system, which plugs into your camera and prints with zero ink involved. Instead, crystals are baked onto special paper and ta-dah! Instant prints.
We remarked that this could be the Polaroid of the 21st century. Turns out Polaroid must have been paying attention, because it has licensed the technology and ta-dah! The Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer.
It's a shame that the name is so clodhoppingly clunky because this is an elegant little number. The handy-dandy printer -- let's call it the PDIMPP -- is 120 by 70mm and a svelte 23.5mm deep.
It connects to your camera via USB utilising the ubiquitous PictBridge standard, or wirelessly to Bluetooth-enabled devices. It then prints out business card-sized pictures in roughly the time it takes to say 'Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer' five times. The results are borderless colour images that are dry to the touch as soon as they emerge from the device.
This marks a return to the instant photography that made Polaroid legendary. Polaroid do have a line of compact cameras but good luck tracking it down down under, unless you go online. The range features face detection and the increasingly popular smile shutter, as well as a much more useful blink detection.
There's no word yet on Australian pricing or availability. Whether people will start carrying PDIMPP devices to pubs, clubs and parties is open to question, but in our experience the handing out of Flickr and Moo cards is on the rise, so who knows?
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