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> Apps that offer what should have been offered by the OS vendor in the first place. This is really it. The Google/Android team have already made the "Zebra" l
by bjarneh 6y ago
> Apps that offer what should have been offered by the OS vendor in the first place.
This is really it. The Google/Android team have already made the "Zebra" library that actually reads barcodes; why on earth do they not include this as a standard app. Instead we get this myriad of different barcode scanner apps with all sorts of harmful features. All the heavy lifting is done by the Android team anyway (the actual barcode scanning).
To make matters worse, scanning a barcode when you enter a store/cafe (to register your location), is now begin done everywhere in order to track potential covid19 spreaders. This forces anyone without an iPhone to install at least one of these potentially harmful apps.
- captn3m0 6y agoIt is 2021 and Android still doesn't have a QR code scanner by default.
- welly 6y agoI don't know if it differs from various vendor releases of android but certainly on my Samsung S20, QR codes can be read without an additional app just by pointing the camera app at one. I seem to recall my Pixel XL did the same.
- danielsamuels 6y agoIt's built into the camera app
- pjc50 6y agoThere is no "the camera app"; the manufacturer often provides their own. It may well be in recent versions of GCam, but quite often it requires you to bail out to Google Lens for some reason. Android is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never quite know what you're going to get. And sometimes it's stale.
- martyvis 6y agoActually they do if they have Google Assistant, which I imagine anyone with Android 7 or later will. If you use the Google Lens feature it will decode barcodes and QR codes. But unfortunately this feature is pretty much self-discovery rather than a publicised function
- perryizgr8 6y agoSamsung phones have it in the camera, so I guess most Android users do have a barcode scanner built-in.
- captn3m0 6y agoWhy are Android users installing all these apps then? https://play.google.com/store/search?q=QR%20scanner&c=apps&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/search?q=QR%20scanner&c=apps&h...
- meibo 6y agoBecause most Android users don't know about Google Lens/their camera app and google "Barcode Scanner app" when they get their phone.
- magicalhippo 6y agoMy Samsung has a built-in QR scanner, which I found out by accident. I downloaded an app for it because it never crossed my mind it would be built into the camera app. After all I don't want to take pictures of the QR code, I want to decode it... No idea when it was introduced. I've had an S3, S5 and now an S8 where I discovered it by accident last year. Pretty sure the S3 didn't have it.
- jabroni_salad 6y agoPersonally, when I installed the app, there wasn't one built in. I just still had it lying around.
- artifact_44 6y agothe camera app scans qr codes on my pixels.
- captn3m0 6y agoLimited to certain phones. Otherwise, how do we explain millions of installs on QR code apps?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- simias 6y agoGoogle lens does it, is it not part of stock android? My phone runs Android One, so I think it's all stock but I could've missed a subtlety.
- captn3m0 6y agoLens isn't AOSP, so it gets different treatment depending on your manufacturer.
- sdefresne 6y agoThe stock Camera app on my Android phone recognises QR codes. This is on Android 11 on a Pixel 3. I think this has been the case for a few versions of the OS (but don't have access to old versions to check).
- teekert 6y agoYeah, it's always in the flashlights, the barcode scanners, the background packs. They all address super basic functionality that many, many people seem to want (if I could just set a ringtone from YouTube, it'd save me from going through a bunch of shady apps, if I ever needed a ringtone that is). Yet they just aren't included in the base OS (or weren't always, my lineage OS has a flashlight currently). Therefore, they offer very low hanging fruit(super simple app, one can hardly ask money for it, so how does one make money?) I heard from a friend that iOS has TOTP and indeed a barcode scanner build in, same goes for cal/carddav. To be fair, my wife's Pocophone also comes up with a QR-code icon when the cam detects a QR code. And, FireFox for mobile has a QC code scanner build in (although since I now have to open a new tab for each new page and I end up with many many tabs of the same 4 websites I find myself using FF less and less). Maybe the experience on Pixel Phones is better? GCam makes a lot of difference in many aspects.
- bjarneh 6y ago> Yeah, it's always in the flashlights, the barcode scanners, the background packs. Why are Google afraid to release a free non-harmful version of those popular apps. Is it to keep the illusion the app-store is a vibrant market place where tons of developers get rich? It just seems nuts to allow all those harmful apps (that does virtually nothing) to float among the top downloads.
- mschuster91 6y ago> Why are Google afraid to release a free non-harmful version of those popular apps. Fear of anti-competition lawsuits and complaints. They're seeing what happens when Apple integrates stuff into iOS / OS X core that previously were third party provided, or the flak that Amazon gets for pushing AmazonBasics products.
- bjarneh 6y ago> Fear of anti-competition lawsuits and complaints. They could just create an open source variant that suddenly shows up top when people search for QR or barcode scanner. It would be in their best interest, and it would not violate any anti-competition laws, nobody can demand to see how these apps are ranked I guess?
- manderley 6y agoMy Moto G8 Power (G Power in the US) Android phone has it as part of the Camera app; when you point the camera at a code, a small bubble will pop up at the bottom allowing you to follow the link/see the content.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago> To make matters worse, scanning a barcode when you enter a store/cafe (to register your location), is now begin done everywhere in order to track potential covid19 spreaders. This forces anyone without an iPhone to install at least one of these potentially harmful apps. Our (New Zealand) Covid tracing app scans QR codes itself. What jurisdictions are requiring to scan an arbitrary QR code using random apps? https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-resources-and-tools/nz-covid-tracer-app https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...
- bjarneh 6y agoIs there anything you guys in New Zealand haven't done better during this pandemic? :-)
- bbarn 6y ago"Better" is certainly a point of view here. Having to tell the government all of your whereabouts when you already live on an Island with no spreading is an overreach, IMO.
- Ensorceled 6y agoThe 21,000 dead here in Canada would like to argue that it is much, much better but, well, they can't. I literally can not believe you are arguing it's not better.
- logicchains 6y agoBelieve it or not but not everybody believes that human rights like privacy are always optional when lives are at stake. Ever heard of the phrase "the end doesn't justify the means"?
- adriancr 6y agoexactly, how are you going to visit the mistress(es) if government tracks everything and eventually will be leaked? (a bit of sarcasm but the point stands, privacy shouldn't be optional)
- pmontra 6y agoMy Android 10 phone from Samsung has both the flashlight and the QR code scanner icons in the drop down notification bar. I don't know if it is a standard Android feature or something from Samsung.
- kevingadd 6y agoIt's Samsung, though many other vendors also offer it.
- mcv 6y agoOnePlus seems to have the QR code scanner built into its standard camera app. And the flashlight into the setting shortcuts. Very convenient, and perhaps necessary, considering all these app stores becoming malware vectors.
- Chris2048 6y agoThere should probably be a "standard apps" project, similar to prog-langs "standard library" - sponsored by goog et al but not owned by it, and heavy on security and standardisation. what do you recon would be included? - barcode scanner, - auth app, - calculator of some kind, - wifi management, dns/network/firewall management.
- cormacrelf 6y agoThe same is true of things like Instagram, where they have made downloading an image so difficult that people install malware purporting to be able to do it all the time. Pretty huge vector.
- emayljames 6y agoOn last point, Firefox/Chrome and derivatives have scanning built in. It would be very simple to have an app that links to Chrome.
- m-p-3 6y agoThe ability to read QR codes should be added to Android's Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) default camera app, this way vendors would need to ensure their camera app are all equipped with this if they want to ship with Google Play Store.
- loufe 6y agoA great argument for installing F-Droid in my eyes.
- UncleMeat 6y ago"Google creates barcode scanning app, replacing popular app with 10m+ downloads". Platform providers are also criticized when natively offering features that apps offer. You sort of can't win.
- chii 6y agothe platform should accept the criticism, because it doesn't hurt them. they have no feelings. People doing low effort apps can only just whinge when the floor shifts under them. i have no sympathy - they just need to adapt and improve, and create new value to sell.
- bjarneh 6y agoThere probably could be some backlash, but it would be easy for Google to brush this off by listing harmful features they removed in the process. They have done more drastic things in the past. They have even removed apps entirely from Android phones due to very harmful features, and nobody cared when they heard about the horrid things these apps did in the background.
- codazoda 6y agoOn android (and I think iPhone too) you can scan barcodes with the camera app. It's not obvious, but I learned this from servers this year. When we sit down they just say, "use your camera app to scan the barcode". It seemed to work for everyone at the table. Samsung, Pixel, and iPhone.
- sundvor 6y agoMy S21 Ultra has a QR scanner built in, but no barcode. Are the old ones still used for such purposes? I've only seen QR codes used for eg contact tracing.
- Shorel 6y agoMy Android phone has the barcode scanner app built in. Also FM Radio, screen recorder and IR remote control.
- sssk 6y agoWhile Google Lens does the job for the most part, we created a free privacy minded security first app - https://dhiway.com/seqr/ https://dhiway.com/seqr/ This app plugs in to Google's anti-malware lookup service to flag harmful content from making it to the device.
- TrianguloY 6y agoThe issue is not having a default app or not, the issue is having a qr reader external service. Imagine you are an app developer of a really simple app that takes a number and tells you if that number is in a valid phone format or not. You have a textbox, the user enters it, you do the checking and display the result. Easy. Now imagine you want to allow scanning a qr which contains a number, to do the checking afterwards. You need to either ask your users to use an external app to scan and then open yours, include all the qr related library inside yours, or use a special intent from a third party app (that the users need to have already installed). First solution is slow and inconvenience for users, the second is what almost all apps do, but then the code logic is duplicated on all of them (with the increment in app size). The third option is the best, both for the developer and for the user, however there is no official qr service so in the end this is basically option 1. I mean, you already have a service to get a picture, a file and a contact, among others (you don't need to include all the code, simply do a call to the respective intent and wait for the result) so why don't extend this with the qr too?
- miohtama 6y agoPatents