A First for Samsung: Smartphone Printers

This week Samsung launched a series of printers that can print documents from smartphones and other mobile gadgets using Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct is a Wi-Fi Alliance certified standard that enables anytime, anywhere communication without the need to connect to a traditional home, office or hotspot router. Devices such as mobile phones, cameras, printers, PCs and gaming devices can interconnect with one another using the Wi-Fi Direct feature through embedded applications in each device.

While Samsung officials acknowledge the capability is nothing new, their smartphone printers provide a wide range of features that competitors don't match. Samsung is promoting their ecosystem with its new set of printers that provide better features than HP-equivalent printers. The wireless ML-2160 and SCX-3400 series printers feature Wi-Fi Direct with features that dramatically improve ease of use and expand the type of documents that users can print wirelessly.

A quick video tutorial that Samsung provides via YouTube summarizes the most important differences between Samsung’s Mobile Print application versus HP’s iPrint application:

• HP requires two applications (iPrint PDF and iPrint Photo) for the wireless printing to be enabled. Samsung enables Wi-Fi Direct with a single application.
• Both companies publish printing and scanning capabilities. However, HP has enabled scanning only on iOS devices. Samsung enables printing and scanning via iOS and Android devices.
• Samsung’s Mobile Printing supports inkjets and laser printers whereas HP’s iPrint supports only inkjet printers.

In order to enable Mobile Printing via a Samsung smartphone or tablet, just download the “Samsung Mobile Printing Application” from either the Apple or Android mobile application stores. While Samsung does not yet command a significant market share among the leaders such as Lexmark and HP, it will continue to chisel away notable bits of share with better innovations and universal connectivity in the years ahead.