"Pull" Barcode Scanning Could Be Android's Killer App

Seor Jojoba writes "The release of T-Mobile's G1 Smartphone is shifting focus away from push-based barcode scanning, where embedded URLs send you to locations of a vendor's choosing. There is now more interest in pull-scanning, where product information is retrieved from user-specified sources. It may be that QR-Codes and other 2D barcodes will have their thunder stolen by 1970s-era linear barcodes. On the iPhone, scanning a 1D barcode is slow and unreliable. But the G1's improved optics and Android's improved access to image scans has made 1D scanning quick and useful, opening the gateway for killer apps that help people make spending decisions."

Comments

iPhone slow and unreliable because of 2M camera?

[samkass]

" On the iPhone, scanning a 1D barcode is slow and unreliable. But the G1's improved optics and Android's improved access to image scans has made 1D scanning quick and useful,"

[citation needed]. 2 megapixel is more than enough to scan a 2D barcode, and the iPhones optics are quite reasonable. If the iPhone scanning is actually "slow and unreliable" (I have no evidence of this) it's simply because of the algorithm that the third party developer is using.

For what it's worth, though, the iPhone has 7 scanners on the App Store when you search for "barcode" and all seem to revolve around one kind of 2D bar code or another (EZcode, DataMatrix, QR Code, ShotCode, Blotcode, etc). The reviews seem to indicate the iPhone is quite good at scanning them.

Basically, the article submitter appears to be another anti-iPhone troll, which is too bad because for me it detracts from his main point about bar code ubiquity.

Re:iPhone slow and unreliable because of 2M camera

[binarylarry]

Yeah, but at least he has one thing right:

The !phone sucks.