We can pretty much do everything we need to with our phones and on-the-go. When it comes time to scan a document to someone, that always catches people off guard though. Most people don’t have a printer in their homes, so unless they’re at work in an office, scanning seems to be a hard task to find a solution for. However, there are two main ways you can scan on-the-go and we’ll explain the benefits to both below.

But first, you need to under one term: OCR readers.

What is an OCR reader:

An OCR reader, or optical character recognition reader, recognizes and converts text that’s printed or handwritten into typed text on devices like computers and smartphones. This text is then searchable through the PDF version of the scanned document, or written out and able to be edited.

In simpler terms: it takes printed words and puts them onto your devices.

2 Ways to Scan On-the-Go:

A smartphone or tablet

This is the most convenient option for scanning on-the-go because your smartphone or tablet is probably always by your side. There are different popular apps for making this happen, such as Evernote Scannable and Cam Scanner. Even more versatile apps offer scanning capabilities, such as Google Drive, so that you can easily save your scanned documents beside the rest of your files.

For iPhone users, you can scan through notes if you have the iOS 11 release on your device. This particular option is pretty cool because you don’t have to download a new app and the scanning features offer everything you could need for convenience purposes, from cropping to rotating. You can also choose to save your scanned documents in color, grayscale, black and white or as photos. This is a great solution if you’re in a hurry and just need to send over a signed document or quick copy of your paperwork to somebody.

However, the only downside is that even when some smartphone apps claim to have OCR, or text recognition, the technology is just not readily available and reliable at this time for these devices. So if you want to go back and search within a document for something particular, you won’t be able to.

A portable OCR scanner

The more advanced option to enhance your mobile scanning capabilities is to purchase a portable OCR reader like Scanmarker. This device is a scanner that you can take with you no matter where you are, and yes it does recognize text. In fact, you can even scan and copy lines of text onto any preferred document you work with in real-time, on any of your devices. Scanmarker is a pen-shaped scanner that allows you to be very precise about which lines of text you want to scan, no matter if they are handwritten or printed font.

You can opt for the traditional product which comes with a USB cord to hook it up to your computer. The other option is Scanmarker Air, the cordless version which connects to any of your devices with Bluetooth. This one is available in seven trendy colors for you to choose from.

Beyond scanning text, you’ll also be able to scan barcodes too. And besides translating text to documents, you can also translate text to audio, a powerful tool for people with learning disabilities or visual impairment. Here are some more unexpected ways to use Scanmarker.