In the past couple of years, Work from Home has become mainstream. While this brings convenience, it also adds a new set of challenges like handling important documents at home, and scanning and editing them, which were once done in a secure office environment. Plus, everything is handled online, which means you need the right tools to perform these tasks securely.
This is where iScanner comes into the picture, bringing in a wide set of tools to manage your routine tasks like document scanning, editing, along with a bunch of add-on features based on their OCR technology. One of the highlight features of the iScanner app is its ability to save all the documents locally on your phone instead of syncing them to the cloud.
Let’s take a closer look at how the features work on the app.
iScanner App UI
The iScanner app is available for both Android and iOS and both versions share more or less the same features. However, the iOS app feels a lot more polished, with the app featuring tutorials for each feature as well as a dedicated Actions section. Also, presently, the Area Calculator function is exclusive to the iOS app.
The iScanner app has a pretty simple UI with a + button at the center allowing you to immediately add a document via your camera, photos (gallery), or import (files or other apps) method.
What I love about the app is that you can simply swipe between different options right inside the camera menu. These functions include a QR Code scanner, Documents scanner, ID Card Scanner, Passport scanner, Area Calculator, Object Counter, and Math Problem solver. The app comes with preset borders for each of these modes, so using them is pretty easy and straightforward.
Once you add the image, you are greeted with options to edit the document. Note that the added documents are available via the Documents folder on the homepage of the app.
Once you are in a document, the scanning and editing tools are available in the bottom row of the app.
Document Scanning Features
iScanner supports a bunch of document scanning and editing features such as adding signatures and text, cropping and straightening a document, and even optical character recognition of written text in 23 languages.
When it comes to editing tools, the app offers pretty decent features like crop, straighten, color (B/W or colors). I tried out all of them, including the straighten tool, and they work without any issues. AI cropping for ID cards and documents is also fairly accurate and if you are unhappy with the final result, you can manually tweak the borders for your desired result in a few seconds. The B/W color tool is especially good, as you can tweak it to enhance the document’s text, giving a real scanned image feel.
Next to the edit function, you’ll find the Add Page button, which is a simple tool to add more pages to the same document file.
Then you get an option to add an e-Signature to the document. You can use a freehand tool to draw your signature, add a text on the document, or even add it via the camera or photo option. The app auto aligns the signature in the bottom right corner of the document, but you can move it around to anywhere you want.
Next up is the OCR button, which works really well if it’s a printed document. However, handwritten docs (unsurprisingly) don’t fare so well, unless you have perfect handwriting. The app supports nearly 23 languages for OCR (the app downloads the selected language files separately).
Then we have another useful tool called Markup which allows you to add highlights to the document. It works as advertised and is pretty useful, especially if you have to mark certain sections of the document for work.
If you want to hide certain parts of the document, you can use the Hide button. Under this button, you get options to blur out certain sections, or you can simply cover certain areas of the document.
Finally, there’s also an Insert button that allows you to insert shapes or photos into the document.
Overall, when it comes to document scanning and editing, the iScanner app comes with a good set of practical and useful options. The UI as well as the number of features make it one of the best document scanning apps in the market right now.
But apart from document editing tools, iScanner has also added a couple of interesting features that are worth checking out.
Area Calculator
The app comes with an Area calculator function that can calculate the dimensions of a surface (flat) with approximate measurements.
This feature can be very handy to find the length or breadth of a surface quickly. I personally found it to be pretty accurate. Note that the accuracy depends on your selected start and endpoints of the surface. And if you can pinpoint the borders properly, the resulting measurement will be very close to the real one.
You can even find out the area of the room by pointing the app to one corner and connecting the other corners of the room to find its dimensions. Again, the results were surprisingly accurate, and if you set the dimensions properly, you’ll get results very close to the real figure.
Math Problem Solver
This is another useful feature wherein the app will use OCR to recognize the math problem and then solve it for you. iScanner supports a bunch of arithmetic problems like the root of a number, decimals, factorials, simple, square, and cubic equations, and logarithms. However, complicated equations like systems of equations (simultaneous equations) can’t be solved by the app, at least not yet.
That said, most of the basic equations and arithmetic problems were recognized accurately when I tested the app. The results were accurate too! The app even recognized my handwritten equations, which was a pleasant surprise.
Overall, I can say that the math problem-solving feature of the iScanner app is not a gimmick and can be very useful for students as well as professionals.
Object Counter
Unfortunately, the object counter feature failed to work properly in my testing. I tried the counter with different objects, but clearly, the app struggled to give me an accurate figure.
Whether it was a bunch of objects with identical designs or slightly dissimilar ones, the app failed to accurately count all the objects in the image. So for most purposes, you may not be able to rely on this counter feature for an accurate reading. The company did say that they are working on improving this feature but right now, I personally can’t recommend users to rely on it to get an accurate object count.
iScanner App Pricing
To conclude, BP Mobile’s iScanner is an excellent app with a user-friendly interface and features that work really well. However, these features don’t come cheap, especially considering the free version has a lot of limitations. If you need the above features only for a couple of days, you can get their trial version, but again, it’s available only for 3 days, which is quite limited.
But for those who require a professional document editing and scanning app for regular use, the iScanner app can be a good choice, especially if you can get their yearly subscription.
The subscription to the app costs 9.99 USD per month or 19.99 USD per year. Note that your documents are stored within your smartphone itself and do not sync to the cloud. While this makes transferring the app and its docs to another smartphone a bit of a hassle, it’s something you have to accept for better security.
So, if you want a powerful document editor and scanner for personal or professional use or even an app with an excellent OCR feature, the iScanner app is a fantastic option.
You can check out their official website here or download the app from the Play Store or Apple App Store.
