Embrace The Cloud! 5 Ways To Print From Your IPhone

Not so long ago, the idea of printing from a cell phone seemed a mere dream of science-fiction. Today it has become a commonplace convenience, and as we do more of our daily work on smartphones and tablets, tech that facilitates streamlined mobile printing is quickly becoming a business necessity.

In the last year, mobile printing technology has proliferated and become substantially more sophisticated (ie. easier to use). Here’s everything you could possibly need to know (and a few cool tricks you might like to know) about printing from an iPhone.

The Cloud

Cloud computing is the cornerstone of modern remote printing. If your phone can connect to wifi, it can print. On the iPhone (3GS or later), AirPrint is the foundation of cloud printing. Assuming there is a compatible printer in the network, all you need to do is choose “print” from the menu in most apps (including Mail, Safari, Notes, etc.), choose the printer, and presto. It’s that easy.

HP ePrint & PrinterOn

To be blunt, there are simply too many printing apps out there to name or discuss them all; so I’ll keep this simple. The best two are HP ePrint and PrinterOn. Both are free, easy-to-use, and effective. Both allow you to print from a personal printer or a public one connected to a wider network (and the networks are getting wider and wider these days).

As you might expect HP ePrint will only connect you with HP printers, but has the advantage of linking you to the company’s large on-demand community, where you can order prints at FedEx Office, UPS stores, Walmart, and various hotels with the click of a button. PrinterOn serves about the same function, but works with a wider range of compatible printers.

Other print companies also have free apps that are worth checking out if you own one of their machines. These include EpsonPrint 2.0, Lexmark Mobile Printing, and Samsung Mobile Print.

Printopia

Another app worth mentioning is Printopia. If you lack an AirPrint compatible printer, but have a Mac on the network, installing Printopia will enable AirPrint on any printer in the network. If this for some reason won’t work, you can also use Dropbox-to-Mac and print from the connected computer.

Email Printing

One of today’s niftiest mobile printing solutions that is beginning to gain momentum is email printing (currently supported by both Epson and HP), which allows you to print anywhere you can find wifi. Just send the document you need to print as an email attachment through the app platform, and you can print on any computer in the world with an Internet connection and an online printer.

Wi-Fi Direct

Wifi Direct is another brilliantly simple, somewhat futuristic mobile print technology. Though it still isn’t widely supported, it will be soon (as soon as print companies add wifi capabilities to all their machines, that is). Its advantage is a drastically simplified setup process, which cuts out the middleman (so to speak).

The phone connects directly to the printer via WiFi with the click of a button, mobile printing becomes faster and easier, and we all pat ourselves on the back for having arrived in the future. As you can see, printing from an iPhone is easy and getting easier every day. With the exception of AirPrint, most of what I’ve discussed above also applies to Android and Google phones.

In general, as the print industry continues to shrink, we are finding fewer reasons to print documents that were once necessary, and our demand for high-quality prints is steadily rising. It won’t be long before personal printers become anachronistic, and the sector shifts to high quality on-demand products.

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This article was contributed by PrinterInks.com, stockists of all leading brand ink cartridges and print supplies.