Fast Document Scanning With iPhone

You are on the go and have to scan a document, but the scanner is at home – what do you do? We have two apps for you that solve this problem because you can easily scan documents with your iPhone. You just have to allow the access to your camera and you’re good to go. You can scan, crop and even edit the text in the scans. In our test, we compare a free app with a fee-based app.

camScanner

You can scan and digitalize documents, business cards and even handwritten notes with “camScanner”.

The scanned documents are recognized and cropped automatically. If the cropped image isn’t right, you can edit it by yourself. In order to make oblique edges work, you have 9 points to move and to adjust it properly.

If necessary, you can run your scanned document through the automatic text recognition (OCR) to digitalize the document. It doesn’t always work failure-free and most of the times you have to edit the text afterwards.

In contrast to other free apps, you can use the OCR on every scanned document with camScanner. If you want to edit the text, you have to purchase the premium subscription for $4.99 per month or 49.99 per year (state: 6/25/2019). However, the free version gives you the possibility to test the OCR beforehand.

The quality of the scanned documents and the scope of service are good for the free app. The automatic editing and the extra options for subsequent corrections provide a good result and the scan of the document is fast.

In contrast to other free apps, you can run an OCR program over your scans. However, you have to pay, if you want to edit the text, which would cost you $4.99/month or $49.99/year (state: 6/28/2017). The positive side is that you can test the text recognition feature first, unlike other apps.
Here you’ll find camScanner Lite.

Tip: Did you know that you can easily scan QR codes with the iPhone?

TextGrabber

If you often have to scan documents and translate them, then “TextGrabber” is the best choice for you! You just take a photo of the text field that you want to scan and translate. You can also crop it to only show the important text.

The app will read the selected text and then you can use the translation feature. Before the app translates the text, you should check the scan for failures.

TextGrabber scans a photographed area fast and recognizes 60 languages almost error-free. The app, however, has a problem with identifying spaces so that you can’t go without some corrections. The translation feature with 90 languages is handy because you don’t need an additional translation tool or app. The quality of the translated text is similar to GoogleTranslate. So you should check the translation afterwards.

TextGrabber is a fee-based app and costs $5.49. If you want to use the translation feature you will have to pay another $4.49 (state: 6/28/2017). This investment would be worth it if you often need fast translations and want to avoid the detour with GoogleTranslate or another service.
Here you’ll find TextGrabber.

Pen Scanners

Instead of scanning entire documents you could also scan specific lines or paragraphs. This is especially easy using a Pen Scanner as a fast document scanner. You just use the pen to mark the line or paragraph you want to scan and it will be scanned directly to your iPhone.

Review

If you mostly need an app for scanning documents, we would recommend “camScanner” as the best scanning app. The app scans even documents that don’t have a flat surface or lay flat on a table. You can crop the document accordingly. The quality of the scanned documents is good even under bad light conditions and the scanning is fast. Therefore, the app delivers what it promises.

The automatic text recognition by “camScanner Pro” needs some corrections, but they are easy to do and you can test the quality in the free app.

If you need to scan and translate documents into different languages, you should decide for “TextGrabber”. The translation feature in 90 languages is available in the app and can be really handy. The app also recognizes 60 languages and can scan texts of foreign languages. The scan works fast with TextGrabber, but the text recognition needs some corrections.