Testing Two iPhone Scanning Apps
SayWhat allows you to take a picture, “process it,” and then see the results in a little pop-up window. Scanning results in English were heartening as I was able to scan a little bit of magazine text and receive an acceptable response but once I tried something in another language, the app choked. Spanish was right out and even when I printed something in large print I was unable to get it to recognize anything. The first two shots are from an English magazine and the last shot is from one of many attempts I performed using a Spanish language song.
However, if you’re looking for a fairly easy way to grab shots of printed text for use in research and homework, Scanner Pro may be the app for you. I looked at a number of OCR and scanning apps and this one was the one that seemed to get the job done with the most accuracy. Obviously you’re dealing with a few more steps with this app and you could be better served by simply taking pictures of the things in question with the default camera app, but Scanner Pro adds a bit of value but reducing the pages to pure black and white text.
In an ideal world, Scanner Pro would follow SayWhat’s lead and add OCR and translation. However, as it stands, SayWhat is hobbled by poor programming and Scanner Pro is hobbled by the inability to read what it’s scanned. Put them together and you’ll have a juggernaut. Has anyone found an app that can perform consistently in different environments?