QuickMark is a barcode reader for mobile phones developed mainly for the Asian market, but it is also available in English. At first glance QuickMark seems to be a great barcode reader. Quickmarks own encoding tool works very nice. The QuickMark doesn't scan quite as fast as the best barcode readers tested, and it requires a little more steady hand to use. The rest of the program however is better in use than other barcode readers (including the test winner Kaywa). The way Quickmark presents data after it has been scanned, and the options you are presented with to use the data, are by far the best I've seen in a cell phone barcode reader.

QuickMark also supports a whole lot of features other barcode readers don't. Personally I haven't been able to get all of them to work properly, but this still is a vast improvement over most of the barcode readers I've tested. QuickMark can scan QR, datamatrix and QuickMarks own brand of barcodes. It supports encoding web site, phone call, bookmark, send SMS, send EMAIL, vCard, mecard (what is the difference between vCard and mecard?), text, encrypted text, magic jigsaw (has something to do with encoding one image in multiple barcodes, I never got it to work), and geo (a GPS coordinate). The really great feature here is the encrypted text. This is ingenious. Basically you encode the text in a barcode, and supply a password. When someone scans the barcode, they are asked for the password before the text will be shown. Why none of the other barcode readers include this feature I do not know.

On the downside QuickMark isn't available for Symbian 3rd edition phones, making it quite useless for me. Also to download QuickMark you have to register as a user (for free) with them, and I had trouble doing this. I never managed to register with IE6, but ended up using Opera to register.

Conclusion

QuickMark is a great barcode reader for cell phones. Unfortunately they don't support Symbian 3rd edition. It's also a tiny bit harder to scan codes than with the test winner Kaywa, but if you have a phone that's supported by QuickMark you definitely should try it out. This could very easily be the barcode reader you end up choosing as your favorite.

Score: 9/10

To download the barcode scanner software go to this page, register as a new user and download it.

Update: 2007-06-21

Quickmark for Symbian 3rd edition now released. Read more here.

Photo by Dayne Topkin / Unsplash