Xiaomi’s new AR printer prints photos that can trigger videos on your smartphone

Chinese electronics and smartphone giant Xiaomi has launched a new crowd-funded product in the form of a pocket printer.

The XPRINT Pocket AR Photo Printer is Xiaomi’s 153rd crowd-funded product as predicted previously in a report. As speculated, this printer does not just print photos and instead, it also embeds videos within the photos that are shot.

According to a report by GizmoChina, the printer, with the help of a dedicated app, allows users the option to record a video while taking a picture (just like a live photo). Users have to sync the photo and video, and once that's done, bringing the photo in front of your phone camera will trigger a video. The cool part is that the video will overlay the photo, making the image come alive.

The company claims that the app can recognise a photo in just 0.28 seconds and then can track the photo using the rear camera at a speed of 120 frames per second. Users can connect the printer to their devices using NFC or Bluetooth and it works on all mobile devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop or above and iOS 9 or above.

According to the report, the printer comes in white and measures 133 x 80 x 27 mm and weighs 268 g.

The XPRINT Pocket AR Photo Printer comes with 650 mAh battery and the photos it prints measure 54 x 86 mm. The print of the printer is priced at 399 Yuan, which amounts to about $63, and photo paper is priced at 39.9 Yuan which amounts to $6 for 20 photos. The photo printer tray can hold 10 photo paper sheets at any given time. Last but not the least, Xiaomi has launched the product in China and will start shipping from March 2018. There are no details on if and when it will be available for users in other countries.

As interesting as the product is, it raises a lot of questions. For starters, can anyone see the video or is it tied to just your account? Do you need an always-on internet connection to view associated videos? Are the videos stored in the cloud or locally? Will any printout do or does the image have to be printed only via this printer? Hopefully, everything will be made clearer in the coming weeks.