Microsoft's Phone Link to introduce text extraction from Android photos
What's the story
Microsoft is preparing to launch a new feature in its Phone Link application, that will enable users to select and copy text from pictures, synced from their Android phones. This innovative feature is currently live in Release Preview Insider builds, suggesting it will be accessible to all users soon. The Phone Link app, also known as Link to Windows on the handset side, facilitates the synchronization of calls, notifications, messages, and pictures, between an Android phone and a Windows computer.
Usage
Phone Link's compatibility and previous text extraction option
While Phone Link is compatible with iOS devices, its functionality is restricted to syncing notifications, messages, and calls via Bluetooth. The text extraction feature was initially added to the Windows Snipping Tool last year, coinciding with when Phone Link started receiving image share notifications. This allowed users to extract text from phone images using the Snipping Tool. The latest update simplifies this process by integrating this feature into the Phone Link app itself.
Results
Testing and performance of Phone Link's new feature
The text extraction facility is live in Phone Link version 1.24051.91.0 and has undergone testing in Insider Preview Build 22635.3646 (beta). During testing phase, it was observed that the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) was satisfactory, but made more errors than Samsung or Apple's text extractors when used on the same image of a book page. For longer passages of text, allowing cross-device copy and paste might be a more efficient method for extracting text from your phone to your PC.