If you have got an Android smartphone which is powered by Android 9 Pie, or if your old Android smartphone has got any Android Pie update recently, one thing among all the great things this new Android version brings, is Google lens.
Google lens was actually announced back in 2017, after more than a year it has now been a key feature inside Google Photos, it can be even be controlled with Google Assistant, and even maybe your camera has got the Google lens feature.
If you didn’t already know about Google lens, it is actually a feature that can read the images and can take information out of it with the power of machine learning. And in this article, we are going to talk about a few use cases where you can make the best use of Google lens.
1. Copy text from anywhere by just Pointing your smartphone camera
Yes, you read it right, you can use Google lens to actually copy text from not just inside a webpage opened on your smartphone, but also from the real world as well. Be it a Billboard or a webpage you’re looking at on your computer, or a physical printed document that is in front of you.
Simply open your Smartphone camera and find the Google lens option, if it is not available there, you can take a picture like you normally do and open it in Google Photos, you will definitely find Google lens there.
Once the Google lens is triggered, it will try to find out information in the image. Tap on different sections of the image to copy the particular text like you normally do.
2. Find more information about a particular place person or a thing
Google lens can come really handy in scenarios like these, whenever you have an object in front of you and you want more information, you just have to point out your smartphone camera by enabling Google lens and Google lens will try to find more information regarding that particular thing, then it will try to do a reverse image search and come up with accurate results almost every time.
Not just objects, you can point your camera at a popular structure, and get more information about that.
3. Add contacts by directly scanning business cards
This is also one of the popular use cases where can where the Google lens can come handy. If someone gives you their business card, you won’t have to fill in the information manually into your smartphone.
You can simply point your smartphone camera with Google lens turned on, and the Google lens will grab all the information presented on the business card, which can easily be stored on your smartphone in a single tap.
This is something that has been offered by various apps, but it can now be done natively from your smartphone camera.
Also, if it does not work, or you do not have Google lens built into your smartphone camera app, you can always click the photo and open it in Google photos where you can use Google lens.
4. Copy URLs and mobile numbers
You can literally point Your smartphone camera to a URL opened on your computer to copy and open it on your mobile phones Browser.
It also copies phone numbers, either from a business card or from a website and you can make a call to the number in a single tap.
I think this one is really helpful for people who are on their desk and want to open a webpage on the mobile phone, it is much faster than all the other workarounds of opening a webpage from PC to mobile.
5. Read restaurant reviews and ratings
This use case is also really handy for Travellers and explorers. If you are at a place where there are a lot of restaurants around, it really becomes tough to figure out which restaurant or bar to head into.
You can use Google lens and point your smartphone camera to a particular place to find out more about that place. You can even get the ratings and reviews about that particular place from Google Maps and all you have to do is simply point your smartphone camera with the Google lens feature turned on.
6. Compare prices and find where to buy a certain thing
Imagine a situation where you are doing Window shopping and you want to know about its price online just to be sure that the price displayed is the right price you should be buying that particular thing for, you can use Google lens for it.
By pointing your smartphone camera with Google lens turned on you can find relevant products or related products online and find its price.
Other use cases can be if you have liked a product someone at someone else’s place or some celebrities wearing, you can simply point your camera to know more about that product.
I am sure you may have liked these use cases examples and you could also be using it on your Android smartphone. If you do not have an Android Smartphone and use an iPhone you can still use Google lens, Although, the Google lens feature won’t be available in the camera app natively.
To get Google lens to work on an iPhone you will have to either install the Google Photos app, or you will have to install the Google App from the App Store both the apps have got Google lens built into it so that you can use it from there.
So, this was some of the best use cases of Google lens in your daily life. Keep in mind that it is not perfect and won’t be working in every situation, but it is still going to make your life easy.
