talborough Loc: Bellingham, MA, USA

Pam has been looking to print her photos from her cell phone for (years) without getting into WiFi hell. There have been several equipment casualties. *I* couldn't even make them work.

She bought a Canon Selphy CP1300 a couple of months ago. I remember a bit of a dog fight getting her cell hooked to it on Day 1. Well, it got pulled out yesterday and after a bit of manual reading on her part it produced a 4 X 6 of our great-grand daughter.

There may be a ton of alternatives out there, but that's our experience.

(I wonder if I can hook it to an EOS R?)

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

What is “WiFi hell”?

FreddB Loc: PA - Delaware County

Any reason you can't connect the phone to computer via usb, and download the photos? PP and print from there?

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Or, if not connecting the phone as @FreddB suggests, how about just emailing the photos (at full size, if the question pops up) to yourself and printing from there? This needn't be rocket science

talborough Loc: Bellingham, MA, USA

WiFi hell is where you can't reliably (remember how, or actually) connect one item or two items to each other over WiFi.

Cables may work but you often have to puzzle out the file structure on the cell phone. Putting a PC or Mac in the middle may work for some, but not here. (Pam has a PC but, neither of us wanted it in the solution.)

As far as I can tell she saw a picture on her cell, and caused it to print with a touch or two. I have a lot of respect for a product that can do that.

Thanks for the questions/comments,
Tom

mrova Loc: Chesterfield, VA

Hooking your phone up to wifi might need the assistance of tech support then. I regularly send my photos to my dropbox, which goes directly to my laptop, and I can bring into LR before printing or move to a folder on my laptop's external drive. And sometimes I email them to myself from the phone. If you have a iphone and mac, you could use airdrop too to get them to the computer for printing. When I'm at work, I can print whatever I want directly from my phone because it connects wirelessly to the network. But again, to get your phone hooked up, you might need to call tech support for assistance.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Much of this is very straightforward if you follow the logic of each approach. Wifi usually requires a wifi network. Each device has a unique address, and most end user software is set up to assist a connection between connected (to wifi) devices.

Cables offer faster data transfer speeds, and depending on the phone, you will likely need to allow the phone to be recognized as a storage device used for file transfer. In Android, you physically connect to the camera, then in the Settings Menu it will allow you to chose how connected devices will see the phone. Android devices have a folder called DCIM where you can find the images.

If you are trying to print to a wireless enabled printer, or even a printer on a network that has a wired connection, you can enable the printer's wireless print driver on the phone - then you can easily print right from the phone.

The last couple of options can work as well - NFC and Bluetooth. If your phone and printer have NFC (near field communication) connection capability - just touching the phone to the contact point on the printer (or other device) is sufficient to establish the connection and enable file transfer - and I suspect printing. If the printer is bluetooth enabled, you should be able to use the Bluetooth connection just by establishing a bluetooth connection between the two devices.

If you use this functionality infrequently, then take a few minutes to create a cheat sheet, and store digitally on your phone as a note, or print it and keep it near the printer.

There is no magic, mystery, wifi hell, dogs in combat, or any other colorful windmills to tilt against.

You just need to be organized and not panic when you in unfamiliar territory. Just take a step back and think things through.

BTW, the Selphy does not have Bluetooth, but it does offer built-in wireless support for Apple devices using Airprint. And of course full wifi support.

Hsch39 Loc: Northbrook, Illinois

I just picked up my iPhone 5, selected a photo, turned on the printer, selected print, and I had a beautiful photo of my 1 year old daughter. Took me less than 2 minutes, and I never printed a photo of an iPhone.

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

Thanks Gene...that was very informative and you helped me as well.

Bfree2 Loc: Grants Pass, Or

Haven’t heard of that printer, but connections should be fairly straightforward. I have an Epson something or other. It does the jobs needed. We all have iPhones and iPads here, but there have been non-Apple friends here that needed to print, so after allowing password access, they printed, two even pulled a photo. So I’m not sure why there’s a glitch.