Alternative tricks for your smartphone camera

The cameras of modern smartphones take very beautiful photos, but they can also be used for other very interesting and often underestimated purposes by all users.

In the following guide we have collected them all more curious and alternative tricks for using your phone’s cameracapable of making your phone’s camera a very useful, fun tool, and also good for measurements and scientific experiments, as well as for solving homework tasks.

READ ALSO -> Best apps for perfect photos from your phone

Best smartphone camera tricks

1) Identify unknown objects, flowers and animals

Google Lens it is an excellent app for using the camera in an innovative way: just open the app and frame any object or animal (outside, insects, mushrooms and signs) to get detailed information, using the power of the Google search engine.

2) Instant translation and OCR function

As already seen in other articles, they can translate writings with the camera with Google Translate or they can scan texts and written papers into PDF in order to save them as digital files that can also be edited if you use apps with OCR functions such as Google Docs. Another very similar app is Microsoft Lens, to translate with the camera in real time.

3) Develop old photos

If we have old paper photos we can try to digitize them with the cell phone camera to scan and digitize the old photos, also using the negatives (if we still have them well preserved).

On this topic we can read our guide to app to scan photos with your smartphone camera.

4) See infrared rays

If you want to check whether the TV remote control works or not, just point it with the infrared sensor at the smartphone camera and frame it to see it light up.

That is the beam of infrared rays sent by the remote control, which are invisible to the naked eye. This is because most digital camera sensors have the ability to display light frequencies that are invisible to the human eye.

5) Take photos with your telescope or binoculars

By pointing the cell phone camera lens at a telescope or binoculars, you can photograph the same magnified image that we can see using our sight. The photo should come out great, without distortion or blurring.

6) Use the volume button to take a photo

Taking a selfie can be difficult if we were forced to use the on-screen button.
Fortunately, on almost every Android mobile phone model and on the iPhone you can also take the photo using one of the two volume buttons on the side of the phone.

This works for both front-facing selfies and regular photos.

7) Use earphones to take photos remotely

If the trick seen above works, that is, using the phone’s volume button to take a photo, we can then do the same thing with the volume buttons on an earphone, which can become like a remote control.

This time, however, the trick only works on iPhone and iPad, and only on wired earphones, not Bluetooth ones.

8) Take panoramic photos

If the panoramic shooting mode is available on our smartphone in the camera app, which allows you to create a very large image by putting together several photos, it may be interesting to discover how you can create a panorama while driving, aiming the camera out the window, leaving it still and shooting quickly.

9) Split ourselves in the same photo

Again thanks to the panoramic photo function, with the help of a friend it is possible to take two different shots of an environment, filming ourselves in two different positions, to make us appear twice in the same photo, as if we had “doubled” ourselves.

Always to change the background we can read our guide on app to change or remove the background in photos.

10) Scan barcodes and QR codes

On both Android and iPhone you can use the basic camera app to scan QR codes; to scan barcodes we can instead use one of the barcode scanning app.

This is also very useful when you go to the supermarket or shopping centre, to see if a product is available for sale at a lower price on online stores such as Amazon (whose app has integrated a QR code).

11) Solve mathematical calculations

Incredible but true, with the camera on our phone it is possible to frame an exercise, a mathematical expression or any calculation and see it solved on the screen without needing to touch anything.

The app that allows this magic is Photomath per Android e iPhone.

12) Measure your heart rate

This is also a very special function of the cell phone camera, which thanks to an app like Instant Rate (per AndroidWindows Phone e iPhone) allows you to calculate your heart rate precisely (at least according to what is written by the developer of this application) just by placing your finger on the camera lens.

Another app to try to measure your heart rate is also Cardiio ( iOS ) which can use your phone’s camera to monitor small changes in the color of your face.

13) Look at products and buy them online

There are many good reasons to look at products in person before buying them, but shopping online is often much more convenient.

So if you’re in a store, you can use an app to scan the barcode of that product and then see what price is listed online for that same product.

The best application is definitely that of Amazonalso cited among tricks and apps to buy in online stores at the lowest price.

14) Augmented Reality (AR)

“Augmented reality” is a fairly simple concept; the smartphone captures a live photo from its camera and uses its software to interpret that image and modify it by superimposing artificial elements that aren’t actually there.

In another article the best augmented reality apps for android.

15) Discover places nearby

If you point your mobile phone camera at a road or frame a panorama, again using augmented reality technology, there are applications capable of indicating on the screen, above the real image, the names of the places you are looking at and those closest to you .

An example of an app of this type is Wikipedia per Android e iPhone.

16) Integrated document scanner

You can use your smartphone’s camera as a scanner to scan receipts or other documents as you would with your computer’s scanner. With some applications you not only photograph the document but you can also convert it to PDF so as to make it searchable within it.

To find out which applications to use, read the article on how to scan documents to PDF from iPhone and Android.

17) Measure distances, sizes and heights

One of the most innovative functions that we can obtain with a smartphone camera is the real-time measurement of distances, sizes and heightsusing a common reference system and applying approximate measurements with the camera.

On the same topic we can read our guide to app to measure distances with your Android phone’s camera.

Conclusions

These simple and curious tricks will allow you to make the most of the camera included in our smartphone, using it not only for photographs and selfies but also for measurements, to obtain innovative functions and to recognize objects, animals and things on your own.

Finally, we also remind you that it is possible turn your smartphone into a surveillance camera very efficient.

To learn more we can read our guides on how turn your iPhone into a spy camera and audio and video recorder and how Use the Android camera as a webcam for your PC.