Can you use smartphones, or should you instead buy barcode guns?
There is a difference between the way your phone reads a barcode and the way a standard barcode scanner reads it. A smartphone captures the barcode with a camera, whereas a laser device scans it with a laser. Smartphones do not have the red laser beam built into them. This is an important distinction. Your phone can read barcodes but not as well as a scanner. And that might be OK, depending on your particular needs.
Focus
Smartphone cameras are advancing more all the time. The auto-focus they have now only takes a second or two to capture a crisp and clear photo, but has to focus, nonetheless. You know how the camera takes a second to focus, and if you snap the pic before it’s focused, you get a blurry picture? The same thing happens when the camera tries to capture a barcode. If the camera hasn’t made the barcode clear, then it can’t be read. Laser scanners, however, do not have to focus.
Lighting
One of the benefits of laser scanners is that they do not need the kind of perfect lighting that a camera needs in order to capture a photo. So mobile device equipped with a laser scanner is better. In a warehouse, lighting isn’t always as consistent as it is inside an office. You have the bright sunlight coming in from the docks that creates glares, then you have the shadowy area in the back or behind pallets, and there’s also the occasional burned out or flashing ceiling light. All this changing in the lighting impacts the smartphone’s ability to focus and capture barcodes. You could use the flash, but this still isn’t a guarantee in all atmospheres. The scanner laser does not have this issue, because of their collimated beams of light. These beams do not break up as easily as normal lighting. This lack of light divergence allows the laser scanners to read barcodes from further away than a camera phone ever could.
Summary
To summarize, laser scanners can do around 1,300 scans per second. Phones essentially just take photos. If you’re doing more serious work with barcodes, and in higher volume, scanners are a worthy consideration.
Flowtrac agents are happy to advise you based on your current business conditions whether you should first try smartphones or plan on using scanners. Contact us today.