Advantages of Smart Phone Barcode Scanners

There are a number of great iPhone and Android barcode scanners on the market that will help you find the best deals and prices on products you are contemplating purchasing. If you have the product in front of you at a Best Buy or other retail store, you can line up your camera with the barcode on the product and take a picture. When the application processes the picture you will be able to see if the store is offering a good deal or if there are better prices online. The possibilities are endless for syncing online services with these mobile barcode scanners.
One such application is Red Laser, which comes available for the Apple iPhone. In addition to the online comparison shopping the barcode scanners usually provide, Red Laser has several other helpful features. When you scan a movie at the store, not only will the app find a copy of it online, it will allow you to send the whole film to your TiVo. Another feature that the Red Laser provides is adding products to your shopping list. Anytime you throw away a used bottle of milk, you can scan the barcode and add milk to your shopping list to remind you what to buy on your next grocery store trip.
A popular application on Android phones is ShopSavvy, which can be downloaded for free for the iPhone and Blackberry as well. ShopSavvy also has product reviews, and instead of a shopping list it features Wish Lists. Missing, however, is the straight-to-TiVo feature available on Red Laser. The key component of ShopSavvy is its local price comparison, which will help if you prefer buying on-location. Although this feature is limited with its inventory of local products, it is a good start in the field. Finally, if at the time of scanning you don't see the price you want to pay, you can set a price alert that will let you know when an online or local product comes up with a lower price.
A free service that will help with local comparison shopping and finding the best deals on local products and services is Text-Savings. This service can be used on any mobile device capable of sending and receiving text messages (SMS). Available is a large inventory of items provided by local businesses, and an advantage is that a barcode is not necessary to search for the item. Foods and services such as pizza and hair cuts don't even use barcodes! To use Text-Savings' free service, send a text message to 52771 with your query (e.g. pizza) and zip code. Finding good deals on-the-go no longer has to be exclusive to mobile phones that offer applications.

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