In recent years, the smartphone has replaced one electronic device after another as a mobile all-rounder. With free apps such as CamScanner or Genius Scan, the scanner is now to take its place - or at least become mobile. On our mission to the paperless office, we have reason enough to introduce a few of these promising apps.But first the question: What should a scanner app be able to do? What functions do I expect and what are nice extras? The app should...
And while I'm at it, here's my list of "nice to have":
Of course, these are high expectations for a free application, but the competition is fierce and if I am to use an app regularly, it must provide me with real added value. For me as the owner of a classic scanner, mobile use is particularly interesting - quickly photographing a note or receipt while on the move and finding it again at home without any problems. Ideally, I transfer the data to my cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) or send it by email. I have tested whether this works using four popular scanning apps: CamScanner, Mobile Doc Scanner Lite (both Android), Genius Scan and DocScan (both iOS). As an alternative, I also present the document management system fileee, which also offers a scanning app.
The functions
First things first: when used with the iPhone 4 and a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the apps deliver sufficient scanning quality. The procedure is always the same: photograph the document, adjust the image section, save as a PDF. The programmes are designed to compensate for poor lighting conditions and oblique photography angles. After scanning, the documents can be rotated, renamed or extended with additional pages in all apps and are finally displayed in an overview. At least e-mail and storage in other apps are available as export methods. So much for the similarities. Here is a brief overview of the features:
Advertising
The four tested versions are free of charge and are financed by advertising. So you don't get past advertising banners with any of the apps - unless you pay for the premium version. The watermarks that are also included in the apps and mark the scanned documents are annoying. I wouldn't want to send important documents, e.g. a report card, like that. Alternative fileee If you not only want to scan your documents quickly, but also manage them, fileee is worth a look. In addition to many other functions, the intelligent document management system also offers its own, ad-free scan app for quickly importing documents. Scanning works with the fileee app in exactly the same way as with the apps presented above. But: If you would otherwise export the documents from the respective scan app to organise them in another programme, fileee combines both steps in one programme.
Conclusion
The scanning apps for modern smartphones can already do quite a lot and benefit from the ever higher resolutions of the built-in cameras. They are particularly suitable for quick scanning on the go, be it of a note, a newspaper article or a whiteboard. However, it is best to forward the resulting PDF files to another device. Because the apps are only suitable for organising documents to a limited extent. You lose the overview too quickly, especially if there is no tagging function. It is then advisable to use another specialised programme to manage the documents. Meanwhile, intelligent document management systems such as fileee also offer their own, ad-free scan apps. They allow access from smartphones, tablets and PCs and combine the advantages of mobile scanning with other functions such as character recognition and full-text search.
Update: A new, completely revised version of the fileee Android app has recently been released. Read more about it here in the blog.
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