No need for QR code reader with W7 Mango

Rating: There’s one built in already

One of the first actions we took when Vodafone kindly lent GoMo News a Nokia Lumia 710 was to install our favourite applications/ We downloaded both NeoMedia‘s NeoReader and Scanbuy’s ScanLife Classic. Both apps are free so we are a little puzzled as to why W7 Mango users have obviously been buying Barcode Scanner from Therefour Phone 7 for £0.79. Actually, we’ve just discovered that if its QR codes that you want to read, there’s a perfectly good scanner built right into the Windows Phone 7 OS.All you have to do is press the dedicated Search button on the Lumia 710 and this automatically brings up Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

At the bottom of the Bing screen you’ll see three icons. One icon contains a music note; one contains a microphone and the third contains a graphic which looks like an eye.

When you press the eye icon, initially the screen displays this text … “Scan barcodes, QR codes, Microsoft Tags, books, CDs and DVDs.”

The eye icon will have opened the handset’s camera and all you do is hold the camera over the barcode and the software will read it.

We’d assumed that W7 Mango users were downloading Therefour’s Barcode Scanner so they could do price comparisons.

GoMo News tried reading a standard (1D) barcode on a packet of KP Hula Hoops. Bing identified the product correctly but went to caio.co.uk and couldn’t find any information.

However, GoMo News had downloaded another bar code reader which then invited us to download shopsavvy. This app came up with the answer.

Hula Hoops were cheapest in Tescos at 46 pence whilst both Ocado and Waitrose would have charged you 49 pence.

So there you have it. Absolutely no need to pay for a barcode app for your W7 Mango phone.

Article source: http://www.gomonews.com/no-need-for-qr-code-reader-with-w7-mango/