First introduced on the N93, the barcode reader app now comes as standard on the Nokia N93i, N95, E90 and can be installed on the N80. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept you could easily compare them to the barcodes found on many consumer products. Compared to the traditional barcodes they also contain “hidden” data, but their matrix structure can hold a lot more information. These 2D codes are called “barcodes” but a lot of times they also contain elements that look more like squares, but to make it easy on myself I’m just going to call them barcodes. Why are these funny looking figures useful? “You can convert a web address (URL), a phone number, an email address or plain text into a mobile code. After scanning it with your camera phone, you will have instant access to the encoded information straight on the display of your mobile device.” While this is far from a one-click experience, it beats typing URLs, remembering business contacts or long phone numbers or even passwords. You get the idea. While Nokia has been part of the barcode action for quite some time, I didn’t know they actually had a dedicated site that explains the concept and even allows you to create and save your own barcodes. The Nokia Mobile Codes site is part of Nokia’s Beta Labs and can be accessed here.

If you haven’t test your phones bar-tastic capabilities just open the barcode reader app and point the camera to the barcode on the right, what does it say?