About six months ago, Polaroid came out with a portable printer that uses Zink (Zero Ink) thermal printing technology, which combines a thermal print head and special paper that contains heat activated crystalline dyes. Think old-school Polaroid-style insta-printing, but updated for the 21st century. Except the camera and printer are separate.
The obvious next step? Why, putting the printing technology inside a digital camera, so people can enjoy printing anywhere, and the ability to store the image digitally for later transfer to your computer.
The surprise is that Japanese toy company, Takara Tomy, rather than Polaroid, is the one releasing this kind of camera first. It comes out tomorrow.
The new Xiao TIP-521, is a fixed-focus, 5 megapixel camera with 16 a 2.48 inch LCD display and a built-in printer that outputs 3x2 inch photos at 313 dpi (maximum digital image size is 2560 x 1920 pixels). Each picture takes about 45 seconds to print.
The camera weighs 294 grams, comes in three colors and costs about 35,000 yen.
