Personal photo printing has been around for quite some time, except that getting your photos printed out right after you’ve taken them isn’t exactly something you can do without the right equipment. Sure, one can argue that portable photo printers such as Canon’s Selphy ES-series do let you print on the go without having to find a wall socket to plug in for power, but getting one that literally fits into your pocket wasn’t really possible. Until of course, Dell came into the picture with their Wasabi photo printer.

I had the opportunity to bring one around for a while, and while it certainly has its limitations, it turned out to be one heck of a fun printer.

Dell markets the Wasabi primarily around the novelty that is ZINK (short for Zero INK) technology, which basically means that the printer doesn’t actually come with physical ink cartridges. Instead, the color pigments are made in the form of heat-sensitive crystals, which activate when heat is applied. While this means that the photo paper will be proprietary by nature, and that you can’t use any other types of regular paper, the lack of additional moving parts also means that the finished device can be made a whole lot smaller. Plus, not having to replace ink cartridges can be a blessing by itself.

Physically, the Wasabi (or otherwise known to Dell as the PZ310) is pretty small, not that much bigger than my Nokia N82 mobile phone. And given that most of the Wasabi’s made out of plastic, it doesn’t really weigh all that much either; just a smidgen over 200g or so according to the product page on Dell’s website. If its a pocketable photo printer you’re looking for, this one actually does fit the bill. Heck, even the Wasabi’s power adapter is almost as large as the printer itself.

You can send photos over to the Wasabi in two ways: via PictBridge connectivity from a PictBridge-enabled digital camera, or via BlueTooth (either from your mobile device or laptop, for example). Pairing the Wasabi with your mobile phone, for example, is an exercise in simplicity. I managed to test BlueTooth transfers using both my Nokia N82 and my wife’s Nokia E66; both worked flawlessly. Naturally, the main plus point of all this is that you’ll not need any drivers to be able to use the Wasabi, as there’s nothing to actually install in the first place.

Dell’s designed the device to be pretty simple to use, so there’s no plethora of buttons, lights and whatnot to distract you. Aside from the power button, there’s one that makes the Wasabi print multiple copies of any particular image, as well as a latch that opens up the Wasabi for users to load in additional ZINK sheets.

The reprint button is exceedingly handy when printing multiple copies, as the image data is retained in memory even after the print job is done, and the memory cache is only flushed when new image data is received by the Wasabi. That said, you can’t queue multiple print jobs with the Wasabi. Images can only be sent individually, and even then, while the Wasabi is busy printing, it’ll not accept any new print jobs until the print job is complete.

The indicators on the Wasabi are deceptively simple. You get three LEDs, each indicating a smiley face, a sad face and a battery. The smiley lights up during normal operation; a steady glow when waiting for a data signal, and blinking when data is being received. The sad face lights up with something is wrong; running out of media for example. Last but not least, the battery indicator shows the power status; blinking when low on juice, and staying lit when charging.

Dell says that the Wasabi is able to print 15 photos on a full charge. The lithium-ion battery is removable too, so you can easily purchase and tote around spare battery packs in case you need to print more photos during the same session. Recharging the battery takes about an hour and a half; not too shabby.

Each pack of ZINK photo paper comes with 10 sheets worth, including the blue ZINK Smart Sheet you see above, which calibrates the Wasabi’s important print bits for you. Each individual pack of paper comes with this calibration sheet, and Dell stresses that it’s a must to re-calibrate the Wasabi with each fresh pack of paper you load. The paper bay is revealed once you unlatch the transparent plastic cover on the Wasabi.

Printing a single photo takes about 50 seconds, give or take a few; not blindingly fast, but neither is it snail-slow either. The Wasabi does make some noise when printing, but nothing more than a slight whirring can be heard.

If anything, the print quality isn’t anywhere as good as a proper photo printer, as there’s a great deal of grain in the photos. For the Wasabi to produce better prints, you need to ensure that your images were shot with plenty of light. Then again, ZINK technology isn’t exactly mature, we should see higher quality prints as the granularity of the ink crystals gets finer, and as the technology improves over time.

A side benefit of the photo sheets being heat-activated by nature is also that you don’t need to wait for the printout to dry before handling, as they’re already dry from the get go. Also, the ZINK sheets aren’t just photos, they also double up as stickers. The adhesive is pretty strong though, and once stuck on, it’s not easily removed without some mess left behind.

A few things to note; firstly  that the Wasabi automatically crops your printouts to an aspect ratio of 3-inches by 2-inches, which is the size of the ZINK sheets. As such, you’ll have to frame your shots with that limitation in mind, lest a photo of your buddies on an outing end up with someone’s heads cropped off. Secondly, the Wasabi can’t print 15 sheets in one go; it’ll stop after a couple of prints to cool down, which is indicated by the smiley face LED blinking slowly.

The Dell Wasabi comes in three colors: pink, black and blue, and has an online price of S$319 here in Singapore (RM719 back home in Malaysia; and US$149 in the United States). The asking price isn’t exactly cheap for a portable photo printer, but at least Dell makes a habit of running online promotions every other week, so there’s very little chance of you having to pay full price to pick up one of these. The ZINK sheets are priced at S$8.56/RM19/US$20 for 48 sheets on the various Dell country websites.

As a portable photo printer that’s fun to use, the Dell Wasabi certainly fits the bill in more ways than one.The wife took it out to a gathering with friends, to their delight. Most of the ladies were more than willing to overlook the mediocre print quality in favor of the fun factor that the palm-sized printer brought to a girls’ night out. If Dell were looking for validation on the appeal that the Wasabi has, that’s probably the best example I can give you.

Nevertheless, aside from the less-than-optimal print quality, there are a couple of bugbears that we hope Dell will rectify in a future revision of the Wasabi (if any), least of which is the ability to load more than 12 sheets of photo paper at one go. In addition, while having the photos double up as stickers is interesting, it’d be great if Dell could also sell cheaper photo paper *without* the adhesive. Last but not least, the asking price can be a bit of a turn-off, especially since that the Wasabi’s faults are quite significant all by themselves.

For more pictures of the Dell Wasabi, continue scrolling down.

It’s official. The 5800 XpressMusic is hitting Malaysian shores come early January 2009. Considering that this is the first S60 touchscreen phone from Nokia, I’m pretty sure there are quite a number of people who are just waiting to get their hands on it. DC’s initial complaints about the 5800 aside I would really like to get my hands on this baby one more time and give it a run. Hopefully it won’t disappoint.

If you thought that 8 megapixels on your mobile phone is awesome, you’d better grab some tissues to clean your pants in 2009, ’cause Sony’s got some 12MP loving headed our way sometime in March 2009. On the other hand though, we might have to wait a while longer for those sensors to actually make their way into mobile phones that we can actually buy.

Megapixels aside, those really into photography will also argue that the sensor isn’t the only important part, as the lens you use also affects picture quality greatly. To that end, Sony also said they’d be commercializing a series of lens modules – IU060F and the IU046F-  that are thinner than ever, enabling even smaller and thinner camera phones than ever before.

Check out the full press release from Sony here.