Scanning Documents with Your Mobile Device

This review of scanner-specific apps that are usable with minimal setup is excerpted from MLA News at https://www.mlanet.org/news/2015/june/technology.html

The three apps listed below allow scanned documents to be emailed from the app, along with uploading of the documents to a variety of cloud-based storage services with very little effort. This table provides a  breakdown of the functionality of the free versions of each app.

TurboScan is available for both Android and Apple devices. It is a basic multipage scanner. It is sufficient for simply scanning papers, receipts, or other text.

Genius Scan is available for both Android and Apple devices. This multifunction app does not require any registration with the free version, which unfortunately means that scanned documents are not automatically stored in the cloud and are only accessible on the device. The premium version ($6.99) does have the additional functions for cloud export and portable document format (PDF) imports.

CamScanner is also available for Android and Apple. This app offers all of the functionality of Genius Scan; however, it requires that the user register an account to use the app. The free account includes 200 megabytes of cloud storage for documents, while the paid version ($4.99 per month) allows 10 gigabytes of storage. With both the free and paid version, documents can also be accessed via the web. It has the ability to add a watermark on the document.

	TurboScan	CamScanner	Genius Scan
Scan in B&W or color	B&W only	✓	✓
Rotate the document	✓	✓	✓
Export as JPG or PDF	✓	✓	✓
Add metadata to document		✓	✓
Search by name of document	✓	✓	✓
Search metadata		✓	✓
Has image correction	B&W only	✓	✓
Add watermark		✓
Annotate documents		✓	✓
Scan multiple pages	✓	✓	✓
Registration required		✓
Has cloud-based storage		✓
Has web-based presence		✓
Cost	$1.99	Free with in app purchase	Free with in app purchase
Recommended		✓