Microsoft is turning Android phones into pocket scanners with the release of Office Lens onto the Google Play Store on Wednesday.
Available as a free download, Lens allows users to convert photos into PDF, Word and PowerPoint files and save them to Microsoft’s note taking app OneNote and cloud storage service OneDrive.
Writing in an official blog, Microsoft’s OneNote team said: "The handy scanner app recognises the corners of a document, whiteboard, electronic screen or any rectangular media and automatically crops, straightens, enhances and cleans up the image."
As well as converting pictures to documents the app can also mine business cards for contact details, submit receipts for expenses purposes, and identify text so that images can be indexed for searching.
The Android release follows successful launches on both Windows Phone and iPhone, which respectively clocked 3.5 million and 1.3 million downloads after their launches in March and April.
Prior to the launch on Android the app was extensively tested on 2,600 phone models across 270 makes of phone.
"As a result of a user experience refinements, Android phone owners share a feature with Windows Phone users: saving Office Lens images to multiple sources at the same time — for example, OneDrive and Word — which involves separate steps on the iPhone," OneNote said.
