Quickly exchange contact info via Windows Phone Vision Search

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In case people didn’t know it yet: I’m a Windows Phone fan. I wasn't a pioneer and owner from the very start, but I did get the Lumia 800 a few weeks after it was released. And although it didn’t have all my crucial apps from the start, I was amazed by it’s built-in functionality. And for most important apps that quickly improved (for me at least).

But some things are already built-in the Windows Phone OS itself. And some of them are awesome and unique for the OS. One feature is even very unknown; Vision Search. When you press the Search Button , you get Bing Search and at the bottom you can see several icons. For Vision Search, click the button. The camera starts and you can use it to scan text (and translate it!), barcodes (for books, DVDs and games. It links to a website comparing prices of several online shops), QR and Microsoft Tag codes. But it can also detect contact info!

As the adoption of Windows Phone devices is probably a bit higher with Microsoft specialist, I decided that a QR code with my contact info could be very helpful in quickly exchanging contact info during conferences (like MEC). Mostly in case my physical cards ran out or when I forget them.

Just last week, as I needed to exchange my mobile phone and email with another Lumia owner. I showed him how to use Vision Search, as he didn’t know the feature. And he could save it to any account configured.

I use the free Windows Phone app MyContacTile to generate a QR code with the essential information. You can pin it to your Start Screen, make several different for private, work etc. and you could even save it and post it anywhere you like. Such as my blog:

Vision Search: another useful feature built-in to every Windows Phone!