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| (Image credit: Tom's Guide) |
With the upcoming release of Phone Link's new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) function, Microsoft hopes to increase its smartphone connectivity with Android phones. In essence, the new capability will allow you to pick text from images that have been synchronized between your Windows PC and Android phone. This may be a big improvement if you use Phone Link, and if not, it might persuade you to give it a try when it comes.
However, it's important to note that OCR is now included in the majority of Android phones (as well as Apple devices), so you don't need to sync your photographs with your PC in order to extract text from them. In fact, The Verge's tests revealed that the phone's integrated OCR performed superior than Windows'.
As the function is still under beta testing, it may improve once it becomes available to all Windows and Android users. For the time being, those who are a part of the Release Preview Insider releases are welcome to test out the new OCR Phone Link functionality and see how it functions. The option to choose text with a mouse and keyboard rather than a touchscreen strikes me as the greatest convenience.
Phone Link is a function that allows you to synchronize calls, messages, alerts, and photographs between an Android phone and a Windows PC, in case you're not familiar with it. Even the screen of your phone may be mirrored to your computer. However, since they can only sync calls, texts, and alerts from their phones to their PCs, iOS users are only partially able to utilize this capability. As previously stated, iPhone users will be deprived of an additional Phone Link advantage as the OCR capability is exclusive to Android.
It all balances out in the end, of course, because iPhone users have access to various synchronizing options between macOS and iPhone that Android users do not.
Although Microsoft has not yet stated when the OCR Phone Link feature will be made available to all Windows users, assuming it is part of the Windows Insider program's Release Preview, we anticipate seeing it make its way to all Windows users very soon.