The past few years have seen an interesting trend where people are combining taking lots of digital photos with wanting to print them out as physical ones. We’ve seen various brands like Fuji, Kodak, and Canon come up with mobile photo printing devices and now, a “new” kid is joining the fray. If you’re of a generation that understands the sentence “Take a Polaroid”, then you’ll be happy to know that particular brand has announced their Polaroid Lab, coming soon to a store near you.
But what makes this particular device different from other photo printing gadgets is that it actually uses a little bit of old-school chemistry to produce your photos, similar to what the original Polaroid photos did back in the day. And you even get to do that whole shaking the photo while waiting for it to “develop” which for some is probably the most fun thing about having a Polaroid camera. Now you get to relive that experience and let a whole new generation discover this thing, according to a post on Engadget.
From among your hundreds (maybe even thousands) of photos in your phone’s gallery, choose the one you want to print then place your phone screen side down on top of the Polaroid Lab. All you have to do is push a button and the image will then be projected into film and then the magic of instant photo printing happens, involving mirrors, light, and chemistry. When the photo is then ejected out of the device, shake it as it develops.
Having a mobile photo printer is one way to get your more important photos not get lost in the shuffle of all the ones that you store in your phone or on your cloud service. This mix of digital and analog is pretty interesting and indicative of the times when we still want to be connected but we also want to get in touch with our “offline” side.
The Polaroid Lab will cost $130 in the US and will be available for sale starting October 10. It will work with smartphones running on Android 7 and above.
