ShopSavvy, the popular Android/iPhone/Windows 7 Phone app, should be coming soon to a BlackBerry near you. ShopSavvy is a barcode reading application - and much more. Basically, you scan a barcode, and ShopSavvy gives you information about the product. In the Android and iPhone versions, users get access to product reviews and local and online pricing. The few BlackBerry scanner apps don't include local, brick-and-mortar stores.
Alex Muse at Big in Japan has let it slip that they've finally completed the back-end work for their BlackBerry scanner. One truly remarkable feat they've accomplished is live barcode scanning. Currently, BB scanners take a picture and analyze it, looking for a barcode. ShopSavvy will be different. Working with live video coming from the camera, the app will focus and scan the barcode automatically. For folks like me who tire of having to take and re-take pictures of barcodes just to get the scanner to work, live scanning is almost a miracle.
The BlackBerry program libraries for the scanner are complete. All that is lacking is the user interface (what most people would call the actual application) to introduce ShopSavvy to the BlackBerry world. With more than six million users and around 1.3 million scans each day, ShopSavvy has a wide base of users. Word on the street is that Big in Japan is looking for a developer to build the BlackBerry UI. Any takers?
Reader comments
Is ShopSavvy in Our Future?
I'll probably try it out when it comes out
I've been waiting for it for such a long time. Hope it will be there very soon! :D
The live scanning seems like a must. The current BlackBerry apps are horrible. The other thing I'd want a barcode scanning app to do is NOT give information about the product and access to reviews, etc. All I want to know is what's in the barcode. I have no idea why that's so difficult.
If all you want to know what's in the barcode, just read the little numbers below it.
Those barcodes represent a number. That number cross references to a product. The information on that product is available via apps like this in the form of descriptions, reviews, and price comparisons.
1979 called and wants its barcodes back!
Today's barcodes contain a lot more than a short string of numbers. Most times the content is not listed, especially with 2D barcodes.
As far as I can tell the big reason developers include the descriptions, reviews, and price comparison garbage it to generate hits and ad revenue on web sites.
All I want to know is what the barcode says, and I don't want to wait to fire up the browser and make a connection to see it.
is easy answer, you have a dinosaur, you have a blackberry. what do you want from that. you sould get evo4 or iphone. and i warranty you, all your headache will be gone..
What part you guys don't get. that RIM and their gadgets are suck. specially their phones.. any single one blackberry..
and the don't care about what you guys complaint or cry about your POS. phones.
I love literal translations.
Hopefully this works in Canada too and not just the US
Agreed. It's such a disappointment when I finally get an app on my BB that I like but it doesn't work with my location.
This is one app I've been hoping BB would get. If it works as good as it does on other platforms, then this will be a great app to own. I wonder if it will be available for 9700.
edocrab already does the same thing. Anyone care to share the specific features found on ShopSavvy that aren't on edocrab?
Edocrab doesn't do live scanning. You have to keep taking pictures until you get the barcode juuuust right. Last time I tried to use Edocrab, the back-end servers weren't working. I even tried searching for "Playstation" only to be told no results were found.
not true at all. edocrab has done live video scanning for a long time. try updating the app. edocrab went away for a while, but now its back and running.
@ Joseph Holder:
thanks for the response. Turns out the answer is actually in the crackberry write-up
"The few BlackBerry scanner apps don't include local, brick-and-mortar stores"
ALWAYS want to have something from iphone.. rim, don't have their own ideas, they like to copy. they always will be a followers, never will be a leader..
Sorry for you all blackberry lovers.. but you know what you have.
And i was part of this group of lovers for 9 months, but never again, i don't know why i did change my iphone 3g for a storm 1 and 2, big mistake. already fixed.
NEVER AGAIN...BLACKBERRY not even impress me no more... i'm lying, they impress me more, with all their stupidity that they do.. like and example. the bb torch or palmberry 9800 and the new playbook. that you all were excited.
No need to threaten to take your ball and go home.
My g/f has an iPhone 3GS and I have no idea what she sees in it. I'm the TorchBerry and love it more than my previous phones: 9700, 8330, LG EnV, etc.
I used to think iPhone fanboys were idiots, but it's really just idiots who get rabidly stupid like you.
I'm open to other platforms, but nothing has convinced me yet.
And, I'm not "anti-Apple" either; I use an iMac & MacBook Pro at home and love them.
As RIM entices the consumer, I hope they don't forget about their business base.
How many times did you pull your battery today..?
I'm replying to you whilst death-gripping my bottom left corner with full bars, neener-neener!
PS
Is it just me or is it not RIM's fault that Savvy isn't made for them already...bloody fanboy assumes RIM is in charge of making sure apps get to their phones in a timely manner? I always assumed it was the app devs who brought apps from android/ios and berry os to the other platforms :p
PPS You obviously need an english language iphone app that checks your grammar as well
I am truly really sorry you have had a bad experience with BlackBerrys. I can say that I blame RIM for OS 4.7 which was a major fail on the Storm -- sad. OS 5.0 is much more stable on the Storm series but still far from what OS 6 is. I can sympathize with your frustration, but your statements about RIM are far from the truth.
I do agree that RIM rushed out the Storm so the OS wasn't well tested. The Bold series are different. They're stable and solid; but being an iPhone fan you probably didn't consider those non-touch screen devices. I don't blame you. RIM should have been equally supporting both camps! They've only just seen the need to do this in the past year.
Nevertheless, I think RIM has turned the corner the last 12 months. Their stuff is getting good. Integrating QNX and using it as their new OS platform puts BlackBerry OS a lot further ahead than the competition. QNX is all about quality. When you buy mission critical hardware running QNX, it just can't fail. There is no battery pull opportunity or reboot possibilities. It just cannot fail. This is what QNX brings to RIM; but if you look at BlackBerry 6, they had already started to turn the corner.
Sure Apple has a sweet GUI and nice apps, but the iPhone is no BlackBerry. Android can run on so many bleeding edge hardware, but it's still not a BlackBerry.
RIM invented this space against all odds. If you remember back in 1999, there was no one in that space. By the early 2000s, Palm and Microsoft tried to jump in many times but failed miserably.
When Jobs saw the opportunity, Apple finally did step in and wowed the world with their impressive touchscreen GUI, but they did it at the expense of security and a solid core OS. They did not have the networking expertise and offerings that RIM developed and fine-tuned over the years, so they went for apps. This was their sell.
RIM's App World is growing fast in recent months, and it is expected to explode with the release of WebWorks, a quick way to develop BlackBerry apps for the smartphones & tablets. Allowing the PlayBook to run apps off your BlackBerry is so ingenius! No need to install another copy of the same app on your PlayBook if you already have it on your BlackBerry smartphone! BlackBerry Amplified! Yes, Mikey, I'm getting it!
What's also really neat is that you don't need your PC to sync what's already on your BlackBerry smartphone with your PlayBook. You don't have to enter it twice either.
However, the nice fools who try to compare it to the Palm Folio just can't read. The Folio had no other connectivity except via the Palm handheld. The PlayBook has its own WiFi today (all flavours too: a/b/g/n) and it will have 3G & 4G support next year. I guess that requires FCC approval before RIM can officially announce it.
While Apple is still scratching the surface, RIM has a lot of core enterprise-ready functionality built into every BlackBerry. That same enterprise expertise does translate to a better personal device too: communication, flexibility, scalability, robustness, and security. Android is still learning to talk enterprise... I just keep hearing beeps. R2, is that you?
I used to have this on my droid and got annoyed with just the google results it showed.
I found a shopping application called Sccope the other day, it works really well, barcode scanning, product searching etc. Doesn't use Google so it won't throw you to an external site.
Give that a shot.
thats why i left blackberry..they are 5 years behind everyone else...sooooo sorry rim, android rules....
RIM was so busy shipping BlackBerrys and avoiding getting sued that they slept at the wheel while Apple and Google moved in. I think Mikey will acknowledge that.
But these days are over. You can see in the past 6 months that RIM is very serious about their business. BlackBerry 6 beats the crap out of any of the previous OS releases with major changes. If you compare 4.x to 5.x you saw little changes. This is not the case with BlackBerry 6.
Now we see the new BlackBerry Tablet OS... soon to be called BlackBerry 7. A complete replacement of the OS with a solid & well respected QNX core.
Anyway, I can never get over why there are so many iPhone & Android fans posting on Crackberry. I'm really very happy for you that you love your Android phone. Seriously, if it makes you happy, enjoy it. I'm okay with that.
gotta love how the Iphone fanboys go out of their way to bash RIM. Classic!!! RIM must be doing something right