Written on November 10, 2008 – 10:19 am | by Maria Mihale |


Wanna-be cutting-edge art photographers have now at their disposal a cool new toy to play with, more precisely brand new digital camera which was unveiled a couple of days ago by Japanese toymaker Takara Tomy. The device, called XIAO, features a built-in printer and is aimed at women in their twenties and thirties as well as families. More than that, the company says that it will soon release more products that are based on the same technology.

The XIAO is a digital camera that takes the place of the old school Polaroid Instamatic, as it allows users to immediately print their digital photos on the spot via its integrated printer. The 5 megapixel camera comes with a 2.48-inch LCD screen and packs 16 megabytes of memory.

Therefore, the so-called XIAO TIP-521 comes with the following specs: the 5 megapixel camera, 4x digital zoom, 2.48-inch LCD screen, infrared port and support of SD/SDHC memory cards, thermal line printer with a resolution of 313dpi (size of the prints 2 x 3 inches). The device measures 149.5 x 74.5 x 25 millimeters and weighs approximately 294 grams.

The company plans to initially target the XIAO (which means “small” in Chinese) at Japanese consumers; the digital camera is scheduled to go on sale starting November 28 in Japan, for an amount of $320 while 20 sheets of printing paper will cost around $8. Takara Tomy expects a sales volume of 100,000 units per year in this country. As far as the American consumers are concerned, well, they will have to wait a little bit, as the XIAO is said to go on sale in the US sometime in May 2009 for 34,800 yen ($357).

(Source: Dvice)