The Daily App: Scan To PDF Free For Android

Scanning documents into PDF format from a mobile device is now second nature to many owners of Android or iOS-based products, but the problem is that the quality can vary wildly from one scanning app to the next.

In fact, there are even a number of scanning apps available for both platforms that suggest that they will scan to PDF, while actually scanning documents to JPG, PNG, TIFF or some other, bigger-footprint file format. While document imaging on mobile devices represents a major opportunity, too many poorly created apps could spoil the market’s thinking.

We took a look at Scan to PDF Free for Android, a free download from the Android Market by NYM Computing. The app itself is clean, intuitive, and performs the function of scanning a document (or really any image) and then converting it to PDF. Once converted, the app allows you to either save it to the device or a flash storage device, upload it to an online cloud service like Dropbox, or email it as a PDF.

After testing it out, everything worked as advertised. Two items we found issues with: the images were converted to “landscape” even though we scanned them in portrait format, and the PDF quality was mediocre even though the camera on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 that we used is one of the better device cameras in the business.

In a pinch, Scan to PDF Free for Android will get you there, but we keep waiting for a new generation of imaging apps to really transform mobile document imaging.