Scan Barcodes, Save Money with your Android Phone

Walk through a supermarket and you’ll see thousands of products, each of which has a unique barcode. Peruse the shelves of a bookstore – or library – and you might encounter tens of thousands of bar codes. Rather amazingly, each has a unique number and there’s no actual overlap or duplication. Imagine if the first Harry Potter book and a can of stewed tomatoes had the same code, for example! It’d be chaos.

What’s surprising is that the information about each product is also a matter of public record and can be easily searched. Books are actually pretty easy because they all use a unified ID system known as ISBN – International Standard Book Number – and that information also includes editions and printings too, so it’s pretty darn accurate. But all those boxes of macaroni & cheese, cereal, tubs of yogurt, even cans of beer also have these barcodes included. They’re what cashiers are scanning when you check out and pay, but your phone can scan ’em too. There are plenty of customized apps but built-in Android software can accomplish this task too. Let’s look at both solutions.

OPTION 1: A BARCODE SCANNING APPLICATION

Search the Google Play store for “barcode” and you’ll find dozens of applications from a wide variety of vendors. Most are a modest fee – typically $0.99 – or free with in-app purchases, and plenty of them offer lots of cool additional features including QR Code scanning and more. I grabbed this one for my testing, Barcode Scanner – Price Finder:

I haven’t compared it to other apps in this segment, so it might be the best, and it might be missing a feature or two. As you’ll see, however, even when you skip all the upsells and subscription offers (which you only have to do once) it works really well. Launch it, however, and it’s not very interesting:

Point it at a barcode of any sort, however, and like lightning, it’ll instantly scan it and show you the results. It’s so fast, in fact, that it’s a bit disconcerting.

To test it, I went into my kitchen and pointed the app’s camera at a cookie mix. Less than a second later it showed:

You can go scanner crazy and have some fun, and it’ll build up a history as you go:

What about books, though?

SCANNING A BOOK BARCODE TO ASCERTAIN VALUE

I grabbed a textbook and scanned the ISBN bar code, which it again identified in record time:

That’s exactly the right book and the correct edition displayed and while there are shortcuts for a Google search or Amazon search, swiping up reveals that the app has already identified a number of possible sale outlets with startlingly varied prices:

You can see that the most expensive is someone on eBay trying to sell the book for $127.00, while the least expensive used edition is from Walmart [who knew Walmart sold used textbooks?] at a remarkable $4.29. I hope the eBay buyers check Walmart before they make a purchase decision!

All in all, a simple application to use that is a game changer if you’re evaluating the worth of products, books, DVDs, even ascertaining if the multipack at Costco is really a deal or not. But it turns out you don’t need any app at all…

SCAN BARCODES WITH GOOGLE LENS

While on the Apple iPhone you need to use a different app to utilize Google Lens, its excellent image analysis tool, on Android the feature is built into the camera. No kidding, point the camera app at a bar code and it’ll scan it and show you the resultant ID information:

See that “97841440…” pop-up? That’s based on it scanning the barcode on the back of the book. I could just take a picture of the barcode, but instead, a tap on that recognized number produces a far more interesting result:

Since Lens recognizes it as a book ISBN, the shortcuts are contextually relevant (no point in looking for a cookie mix at Barnes & Noble, for example!). But tap in that box to expand it and you’ll find that it too can help with comparison shopping and value analysis:

This is just a Google search that we’ve been moved into, but it’s still extremely helpful, showing that Thriftbooks offers an earlier version (different cover!) while AbeBooks has it for $16.96. A bit more digging might reveal those terrific Walmart prices, but even if you don’t want to add an app to your Android phone, there are options. The experience overall is smoother and more helpful with the Barcode Scanner app, no question, but either way, now you know that you too can utilize bar codes on products to get lots more information about them.

Power Tip: I’ve been writing about both Android and Twitter for many years. In fact, I have an extensive Android help library here for your edification! Please check it out while you’re visiting. Thanks.