QuickMark review [iPhone]

We're huge fans of the 2D barcode and the possibilities these digital hard links offer. You may not immediately know what a QR code is, but you've undoubtedly seen them on the Internet, on a wealth of different products, on billboards and posters, or anywhere that someone wants to engage your smartphone quickly and effectively.

These two dimensional barcodes are the black and White squares filled with a mosaic of smaller black and White squares. Scanning one with a decoder app such as QuickMark reveals the alphanumeric code hidden inside the matrix, which can be anything from a digital business card to a web link, email, calendar event, product info or GPS location.

QuickMark is only one of a great many QR code readers available, but it's undeniably one of the most feature packed. Its scanning technology is smooth and accurate, requiring you only to focus the iPhone's camera on a QR code image (or other form of 2D barcode or, for that matter, traditional one dimensional barcodes) and it automatically detects and decodes it without any further button presses or actions on your part.

Once decoded you're given a preview of the info the code contains, and can farm it out to other apps, such as Safari, Contacts or Maps, for a closer look if required.

One of the major uses of QR codes is commercial data, with many products carrying a matrix image to provide you with additional data on what you're buying. QuickMark offers customisable online price checking by scanning either one or two dimensional product codes, which can be very useful if you're an online shopper and want to make sure the shelf price is competitive. You can even add additional online price checking resources, in case you have a preferred e-shop.

Reading codes is one thing, and a feature that's easily found for free on the App Store. QuickMark therefore justifies its price by including a built-in generator, so you can create matrices all of your own. Shop keepers will naturally find this useful, but QR codes are also one of the best ways of sending contact details between devices.

The app works to a choice of different digital business card standards, and can pull in the data you might want to encode straight from your iPhone's address book. Different fields can be switched on and off for inclusion in the code, or you can add additional, custom data. Once generated the code image can be shared via Dropbox, email, social networks or the iPhone itself.

A complete history of everything you've scanned, along with a registered user account ensures you don't need to be scanning codes over and over again, making QuickMark pretty much the last QR code scanner you're likely to need. You do need to decide whether you need such a feature-rich bardcode app, given that many of its functions can be found elsewhere for free, but nothing else brings them so neatly together under one app.