10 Scanning Apps You Need for Your Android Phone


10 Android Scanning Apps You Need for Your Phone

A scanner is a great tool that brings the physical and digital world together with the only downside being that they are generally not portable. But the smartphone is coming to the rescue again by simplifying yet another function that is very useful for small businesses, scanning using a scan app for Android.

Scanner App Benefits

The global document imaging market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 13.8% between 2017 and 2025 to $153.05 billion, this according to a report by Transparency Market Research.

As more businesses integrate smartphones and tablets into their workflow, having a scanner app in these devices is essential.

And with a scan app for Android in place, you can serve the vast majority of mobile customers. The Android mobile operating system represented 85.9% of the global market in the first quarter of 2018, according to Gartner.

Get Organized and Eliminate Manual Processes with a Scan App for Android

With a mobile scanner app, you give your workforce a tool for getting more organized and for eliminating time-consuming manual processes.

A scan app for Android with optical character recognition (OCR) for your smartphone will capture information on everything from a document to a presentation, business cards, receipts and more.

A digitized version of the document you capture with a scanner app allows you to store the data and make it part of an automated system to get more organized. This eliminates manual processes and makes the information accessible day or night from anywhere.

Signing Documents with a Scanner App

When it comes to signing documents on the spot, today’s scan app technology lets you finalize deals without having to mail hard copies back and forth.

Microsoft and Adobe have partnered to make eSignatures more available, and so have many other providers in the market.

Android Scanning Apps

Having a scan app for Android on your mobile device provides numerous benefit and use cases. They will come in handy when you least expect it.

If you have a relatively decent smartphone with a camera, you can use the following 10 Android apps to scan documents, receipts, business cards and more. For businesses that want to be paperless, using these apps is a step in the right direction.

CamScanner – Phone PDF Creator

This is a very popular app with more than 100 million installs in 200+ countries around the world.

Considering it is a mobile scanner, the features it has can give a desktop scanner a run for its money.

It lets you scan, store, and sync documents. You can then optimize the quality of the scan with smart cropping and auto enhancing to sharpen texts and graphics to make it clearer.  Additional features include, extracting text from images, share PDF/JPEG files, print, Fax, and secure Important docs with passcode.

In keeping up with today’s collaborative workforce, CamScanner allows users to invite colleagues to view and comment on scans in a group. You can add up to 40 extra collaborators and 10G of space in the cloud.

Mobile Doc Scanner 3 + OCR

Using OCR, or Optical Character Recognition technology, Mobile Doc Scanner 3 + OCR can scan any type of document and transform it into PDF. If the document, whiteboard, or product has text, OCR can, in most instances, recognize it.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Mobile Doc Scanner 3 + OCR

It also has image correction tools to detect boarders, correct distortion, and adjust brightness to make the document legible.

Images can be sent as an email from your device or you can upload it to Dropbox, Google Docs, or Box and share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Office Lens

Office Lens is a scanning app created by Microsoft designed to seamlessly integrate with some of its applications. After you scan a document, you can convert the images to Word, PowerPoint and PDF files and share them.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Office Lens

If you happen to be in a meeting a whiteboard mode in the app automatically adjusts the lighting, glare, and shadows to capture the board clearly. A neat business card mode feature captures the information on the card in English, Spanish and German, with more languages coming in the near future.

Office Lens also trims and colors images, which can be saved to OneNote, OneDrive, or on your device.

Genius Scan+ – PDF Scanner

Another popular app with millions of users is Genius Scan. This app lets you scan documents quickly and export them as JPEG and PDF to Box, Dropbox, Evernote or any other cloud service app.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Genius Scan+ - PDF Scanner

The app has smart page detection, perspective correction, and image post-processing to ensure the scan is aligned with good lighting so you can see every word. And if you have a lot of documents, the batch mode can scan several pages in a row. 

Google Drive

You might be aware of Google Drive and the many applications it provides, well you can add mobile scanning to that list.  You can scan your document with your phone and store it in the cloud, but Google lets you search for any document using its built-in optical character recognition (OCR) using specific words or phrases.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Google Drive

Google also has a great sharing feature with access levels for who can view, comment, or edit documents. Another plus for using Google is you will have a global company storing your scans so you can access them from anywhere and they will always be there.

Adobe Fill & Sign

Adobe is known for image manipulation technology, and Adobe Fill & Sign has a feature that creates forms you can fill, sign, and send electronically.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Adobe Fill & Sign

Instantly, this app turns digital files or paper documents you scan with your camera or a file from an email into forms. Once you create the form, you can send it to customers or employees so they can fill it out and sign it. Using reusable text from autofill collection you can quickly fill out forms.

This is a great tool to have in your smartphone or tablet for all small businesses.

Docufy Scanner 

Docufy Scanner has a user interface that simplifies many of the functions of this app. It calls itself the ultimate Android scanner, and it delivers.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Docufy Scanner

You can easily scan, fax, and add annotations to document so they can be synced and filed to be access from virtually anywhere and anytime. The app has auto image resize according to the screen resolution, with full control of brightness, contrast and details.

The document management and app permission provide multi-level filing system and security measures to ensure only approved users gain access.

Tiny Scanner – PDF Scanner

Tiny Scanner is designed for your smartphone and tablet. Saved scans can be stored into folders or shared using email, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Box.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Tiny Scanner

You can also send it to your computer directly over WiFi and fax it from your phone with the Tiny Fax app.

Some noteworthy features of this app include, automatic edge detection, sort scans by date and title with thumbnail and list view, and five levels of contrast for clear monochrome texts.

Handy Scanner Pro: PDF Creator

Handy Scanner, according to the developers, is designed for ease of use and speed, without sacrificing functionality.

You can scan multipage documents, whiteboards, business cards and more with PDF and JPEG outputs with instant uploading to Dropbox.

The image correction fixes perspectives while straightening the document so it can be read easily with enhanced color and contrast.

Scanbot – PDF Document Scanner

Scanbot has an automatic document detection technology that crops the document at 200 dpi and higher for high quality images.  The app uploads to the most popular cloud drives with JPEG and PDF formats.

Need a Scan App for Android Phones? You Can Use Any of These Android Scanning Apps As a Scanner App - Scanbot - PDF Document Scanner

In addition to text recognition technology to accurately extract text from scans, smart file renaming, document signing and Quick Actions, Scanbot also doubles as a QR code scanner and can detect barcodes from any product.

Use Cases for Android Scanner Apps

As a small business owner you are not always in the office, where you have your scanner. When you are on location, your smartphone and a scanner app is all you need to archive the documents you might run into.

You can use a scan app for Android to scan in contracts when you are out in the field for safe keeping because you can store it in the cloud right away. Collect paperwork as you go from client to client, archive handwritten notes, take a picture of a presentation, scan receipts and much more – a scan app for Android makes it all easy.

You will find many a scanner app on Google Play. Before you opt to pay for a scan app, try several of the free versions for a while. When you find the right scan app for Android, with all the tools you need for your business, only then should you spend your hard-earned money for the paid version.

Phone Scanner Photo via Shutterstock

3 Comments ▼

Michael Guta Michael Guta is the Assistant Editor at Small Business Trends and currently manages its East African editorial team. Michael brings with him many years of content experience in the digital ecosystem covering a wide range of industries. He holds a B.S. in Information Communication Technology, with an emphasis in Technology Management.

3 Reactions
  1. I use app Scan&Paste for turning my phone into a scanner. It works very fast, without a cable or loging necessity. The quality of scans is very good, documents are automatically being OCR, so what I get is copy-able PDF file. You can also use it to transfer photos or videos from your phone to your computer, for free.

  2. cant acess tiny scanner pro wont except pass code now what

  3. thank you