Editor's Review
Phone scanners all advertise the same short list: find the page, straighten it, clean up the background, export a PDF. DS Camera Scanner & Photo works through that list competently, which is most of what a scanner app has to do. Point the camera at a receipt or a contract, let the edge detection snap to the borders, and a cropped, contrast-corrected page comes out in a couple of taps.
Beyond the basic scan: pages can be batched into one multi-page PDF, reordered, and re-cropped after the fact. Text recognition pulls copyable text out of a scan, which is the difference between a photograph of a document and something you can search. Filter modes handle whiteboards, ID cards and photos, and signature and annotation tools let you sign a form back without printing it.
The weak point is commercial rather than technical. Free use is funded by ads placed between actions, and several of the more useful export options sit behind a subscription. A 3.96 average across ten million installs is a fair summary of that: the scanning engine is solid, and a chunk of the user base objects to how often it asks for money. For occasional paperwork it is more than enough; anyone scanning daily should weigh the subscription against the alternatives first.
Features
Automatic page-edge detection with manual corner adjustment
Multi-page batch scanning into a single PDF
Contrast and colour filters for text, whiteboards and photographs
Optical character recognition for copying text out of a scan
Signature and annotation tools for signing on screen
Export and share as PDF or image files
Folder organisation for keeping scan sets apart
Pros
Edge detection and cropping are quick enough to work through a stack of pages
Multi-page PDFs come out in the right order without extra fiddling
OCR turns a scan into text you can search or paste elsewhere
Handles the awkward cases too, such as ID cards and whiteboards
Cons
Ads break up the flow between scans on the free tier
Several export and editing options are locked behind the paid plan
Questions people ask
Do my scans stay on the phone?
Scanning and file storage happen on the device, and uploading or sharing a scan is an action you trigger yourself. Read the privacy policy on the Play listing before sending sensitive paperwork anywhere.
Can I get rid of the ads?
Yes, through the in-app subscription, which also unlocks the restricted export options. Pricing is shown on the Play listing and on the purchase screen.
