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Recently I decided to compare three giants in mobile printing standards to see how their respective technologies performed. The Dell E310DW Laser Printer is a printer that claims to work with these giants- Apple's AirPrint, Google's Cloud Print, and Mopria.

Apple's AirPrint is already deeply integrated in the iOS operating system, requiring no additional app installations. So long as the printer and phone are on the same network and the printer is certified for AirPrint, the iPhone can find it almost immediately and print relatively quickly. Very little more can be desired from the AirPrint service except perhaps less of a delay between the time I press "Print" and the time it actually starts printing. In comparison to the issues ailing the other two services, this gripe is a rather small one.   Click here to see the detailed AirPrint review.

Next I downloaded Mopria's print service on the Huawei P8. It took some time, but the service did end up automatically detecting the printer on the network. However, when I tried again later, the service no longer could find the printer. Fortunately, there is a method to add the printer based on IP address, which allowed near instant confirmation that the printer is on the same network. Unfortunately, my endeavors to print through Mopria were met with errors, as I tried multiple times with no success. 

Google's Cloud Print is a service that I had a particularly unfortunately time with, as the reviews on the Play Store are generally positive. The service failed to detect that I was already logged into a Google account on my phone, prompting me to log in, and when I tried to do so, informing me that I was already an existing user on the phone. When I logged out, that message was replaced with the Play Store, which leaves me bewildered as to what they had expected me to want the Play Store for. Even after that, the service still prompted me to log in, barring me from manually adding a printer and simultaneously failing to detect the printer on the network. I tried with the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge as well as the Huawei P8, which had worked to some extent with Mopria. Neither phones provided satisfactory results. 

In the end, I can only say from my personal experience, but Apple's AirPrint required much less effort than I expected and worked well, while Mopria Print Service required a little more fiddling and almost succeeded. I can't tell if my experience with Cloud Print is representative of what most people go through, but I must say that it was the hardest to work with. I was hoping to add the printer via IP address like I was able to do on Mopria but was instead bombarded by requests to log in and subsequently battered with denials because I was already logged in. Had the service detected the printer, however, this would have been avoided, so I would not be surprised if others had pleasant experiences with Google Cloud Print.