Digital scanning, as we know it, debuted in 1957. At the time, Russell Kirsch of the National Institute of Standards and Technology created the first-ever digital image by scanning a photo of his three-month-old child. It was only 176 pixels on each side. Scanning technology has obviously improved by leaps and bounds since the 1950s, but now that phones can serve as efficient, pocket-sized, all-in-one tools for everyday use cases – including scanning – the need for a separate scanner has faded considerably.
Document scanning is now built into iPhones. You can scan a document using Apple’s Preview app, available on iPhone and iPad. The app has a dedicated tool for scanning your physical documents. It can detect a document, capture it, and then save it directly to your device. Users can then share the “scanned” file as a PDF or image, or send the snapshot directly to a printer. On Android devices, you can access document scanning tools using the Google Drive app, as well as other third-party apps like Adobe Scan.
For many, mobile technology can easily replace scanners
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Now that phones can recognize, copy, and paste text from photographs using OCR technology, scanning documents with a phone far outweighs using a flatbed scanner. For example, Apple introduced Live Text, an OCR tool that recognizes text in images, as a new iPhone feature in iOS 15 in 2021. With this feature, a small icon appears in the lower right corner of images containing readable text, which you can tap to highlight all recognizable text in the image. Even some social media apps, such as Bluesky, promote accessibility by leveraging Apple’s Live Text feature to recognize text in posted images, making it easy to copy as alt text.
Scanning text documents is one thing, but what about other media formats? When it comes to physical photographs or artwork that needs to be edited or printed, high-resolution scans are essential. The standard resolution for high-quality content printed from a computer onto physical media is 300 DPI (dots per inch). However, because many phone cameras now have a high number of megapixels – especially newer phones rated at 48 MP, like the iPhone 17 Pro – you can print photos taken with your phone at high resolution, though high-quality printing is only possible up to a certain size.
These creative use cases, however, constitute a niche within a niche; Most users don’t need a dedicated device that takes up more than a laptop’s space on their table. Whether you need to attach a signed agreement to an email or scan one of your personal documents, scanning and sharing files from your phone can now be done in minutes, all without having to touch anything other than your smartphone.
