Technology has been on a non-stop rocket ride for the past couple of decades. Every time I have to tell someone younger than myself that I "remember when the internet didn't exist", a grey hair sprouts on the top my head... and I was born in the 80s!
It's strange to think that there was a point in time where gathering information involved opening a book, music was purchased in a record store, and movies based on comics sucked.
But don't let my crotchety nostalgic ramblings fool you, besides Devo & Back to the Future, the 80's were kind of lame.
Fast forward 30 years later. (Ok, now I really feel old)
Everyone can now order food, talk to their mom, listen to music, scan barcodes, play video games, read magazines, update their Facebook, & get directions all on their cell phone!
Let's face it, smartphones have now made things alot easier.
Besides making phone calls (and avoiding awkward conversations via SMS) one of the most widely used features on every smartphone is the built in Camera.
The single most asked question we receive from clients is in regards to how large a picture taken on their smartphone can be printed? The answer to this can vary between phones, but seeing how the total amount of iPhone sales match that of the current US population, I'll be using the iPhone to help answer this.
Assuming your iOS is up to date, the dimensions of an uncompressed photo taken on your iPhone are 34" x 45" @ 72 dpi.
For those of you unfamiliar with dpi, it stands for "Dots Per Inch", which is a method of measuring image quality amongst bitmap images (jpg, gif, png). Images with a higher dpi tend to print more clearly. The current printing standard is 75 dpi @ 100%, which means if your image is to scale and has a dpi value of 75, it should print fine.
In most cases, 34" x 45" is too big in regards to a wood print's size and budget for most folks. The advantage to scaling down a larger photo is that it can be done so in a way where the dpi increases when the image size decreases. This means that if you take a picture on your iPhone and want it printed on wood, it's going to look awesome!
Below is a size comparison chart I've created to better help explain how big your iPhone photo can be printed...
PRINTS ON WOOD offers a great selection of various print sizes, the chart represents some of our most popular dimensions. As you can see the standard iPhone photo (represented by the red rectangle) is considerably greater in size than our largest offered custom print size. (24" x 36")
Keeping in mind that the minimum dpi for any image to print clearly is 75, and anything over 300 is overkill, printing an uncompressed iPhone photo at any of our custom print sizes wont be a problem.
So to answer your question; How big can smartphone photo print? As big as you want!
Just keep it under 24"x36". ;)