Amazing things you can do with your smartphone - 7. Business Card Scanner

 7. Business Card Scanner

Meetings, conferences, trade-shows and expos only add to our collection of business cards. In fact, it is common to find a long-forgotten business card in the back pocket of your trousers or in the laptop bag. These cards are usually dumped in the maws of our drawers and come out only when we need a specific contact number. But smartphones can make organising them a breeze.

There are special business card scanner applications that store the information listed on the card to the phone as well as on the cloud. These applications use the phone camera to capture the image and with the help of software reads all details and automatically enters it in the phonebook. But not all business card scanners are perfect and some often have trouble recognising characters, especially when unsual fonts are used. Also, the phone has to be held very steadily and in good lighting while scanning a card.

CamCard is an application that accurately scans business cards. Once the image is captured, it automatically saves the information in the card holder or the address book. The free version of the application allow users to save up to 20 contacts in the first week followed by two contacts every week and is available for iOS and Android.

ScanBizCards not only saves the information to the phonebook but also backs it up to the cloud. It also syncs contacts between iOS and Android devices. WorldCard Mobile is another application that is good with this job. There are many other free options too.