Review: ScanBizCards

There are plenty of options in ScanBizCards

If you deal with an overabundance of business cards, ScanBizCards will provide some relief. It takes the laborious process of transferring contacts from a business card into your iPhone or Android contact list very easy.

The basic functions of ScanBizCards are very simple: just take a picture of the business card with your device and ScanBizCards then scans the information and adds it to your contacts list.

ScanBizCards is very good at detecting the essential information from a business card, such as a name, URL, phone number etc. It struggles somewhat when business cards have lots of additional information, are in an unconventional format or have hand-written notes. The text recognition has improved over time, so one hopes that it will continue to become more effective.

Fortunately after importing a card you can edit any of the information before adding it to a contact card. So it is easy to turn D(*&L into Darrell, for example.

Evernote users get an extra treat. By linking ScanBizCards with your Evernote account you can import the text from an image into a contact. This would be especially handy, for example, if you have several business cards that you already scanned into Evernote but now wish to add to your contact list.

When importing an image you can crop it so the scanning is more precise. However, if you crop the photo it permanently crops it in your photo gallery. So don’t choose this option if you want to maintain the photo’s original size.

Another impressive feature is a web backup of all your scanned business cards. It is not as an effective way to find information as searching your contacts, but it may grant peace of mind if you are not using Microsoft Exchange, MobileMe, Google Sync or another service to backup your contacts to the cloud.

Those who want to just backup contacts would not need this kind of service, but if you are frequently handed business cards and want an easy way to upload them to your iPhone or Android phone’s contact list ScanBizCards is definitely worth a look.

On Target:

• One-step scan and import
• Online backup of data

Off the Mark:

• Text recognition not always accurate
• Lacks Retina Display support (forthcoming)

Download ScanBizCards from the App Store (Cost: $6.99)

Download ScanBizCards from Android Market (Cost $3.99)