Everyone is so obviously nostalgic for actual, physical, printed photographs these days. Within the past few months, new Kickstarter campaigns and officially launched apps, offering to print out your smartphone photos have popped up like daisies. Well, here's another one: LifePrint.
LifePrint is a small, iPad Mini-sized wireless printer that allows you to print your smartphone photos at home with no wires attached. The LifePrint wireless printer measures 6.5 x 4.5 x 1.5-inches and weighs just 1.5 pounds, so it is quite portable and easy to store when you're done using it. The printer's design is very simple. It looks like a small box with rounded edges and comes in three color options: all black, black with grey edging or white. The only marking on the printer, is LifePrint's pretty, loopy logo, which resembles a Polaroid candid.
Once the printer is connected to Wi-Fi, you can print your photos from anywhere using the LifePrint app. You can print your photos while you're sitting next the printer at home or you can do it remotely when you're on vacation or at work. For example, you can be in Stockholm taking pictures of your relatives and then, you can send those pictures over the Internet to your printer back in New York via the LifePrint app and come home to see them already printed and sitting on your desk.
The app also lets you choose filters, make adjustments, add text, frames and other cool effects before you hit print. You can also share your newly altered photos digitally on Facebook, Twitter, etc. if you so choose.
The only problem with LifePrint is that it's expensive. The printer itself may only cost $200, which is decent for a photo printer, but printing 30 photos will cost you about $20 and that's expensive. If you use Printicular - another new app that lets you print smartphone pictures at Walgreens and get them delivered - 30 4x6 photos will cost you less than $9. Another, called Flag, will give you 20 free prints each month (all the photos have an ad on the back). It's the cost of ink and photo-quality printer paper that drives up the cost of printing at home. Essentially, Walgreens is cheap and ink is expensive.
Still, it's a cool idea and nice if you don't want to deal with Walgreens. So far, LifePrint has gained more than $24,900 towards its $200,000 goal on Kickstarter. If all goes well and the project gets funded, LifePrint thinks it will be able to ship the printers in December and the iPhone app will arrive in January.
