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Use your Smartphone camera as a Magnifying Glass

Do you remember last time you used a magnifying glass? Maybe in the biology class in school to see stem cells, and the last time you needed it? Maybe yesterday. We need magnifying glass in our day to day life for many things like reading expiry date on the medicines. But we often ignore these things because we don’t have a magnifying glass. Well, here’s a list of apps through which you can convert your phone into a magnifying glass.

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Magnifier (Android)

The first on our list is the Magnifier app. It is easily available on the play store and free to install. Its interface is very user friendly and easy to understand. This app has buttons as well as shortcuts such as tap once for focus, double tap for flash, drag vertically to zoom etc to move around the app. The camera view can be rotated 360 degrees without moving your phone. The NG button on the app can be used for special effects. You can also enable or disable flashlight according to your need.  For zooming you can use x1 button or the slider below or both.

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Pros

  • Easy Shortcuts
  • Flashlight on/off function.
  • Special effects.
  • Easily adjustable brightness

Cons

  • Clarity not up to the mark
  • Using slider is not very smooth.

Magnifying glass flashlight (Android)

This is another magnifying app that allows up to 8x zoom through your camera. Its interface is also very user friendly. It requires android version 2.1 or up and takes around 19 MB of your space. It doesn’t have special effects and brightness adjustment feature features like the above app.

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Pros

  • User friendly.
  • Helps as a reading aid

Cons

  • Free version is limited to 3x zoom.
  • Flashlight automatically turns on.

Smart magnifier (Android)

Smart magnifier also allows you to use your phone camera as a magnifying glass. It is compatible with android version 2.3 and above and requires around 3.0 MB of your space. The interface is pretty interesting and better than other apps. It allows you to rotate 360 degrees and move from portrait to landscape view without moving your phone, on/off flashlight and also allows you to take screenshots within the app.

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Pros

  • Rotate 360 degrees.
  • Easy switching between Portrait and Landscape view.
  • Screen shot button inbuilt in the app.

Cons

  • Only up to 5x zoom.
  • Some features are not supported by some devices.

Conclusion

In the above article I’ve listed 3 apps that enable you to use your phone camera as a magnifying glass. Out of these three apps Magnifier by mmapps allows highest 16x zoom and Smart magnifier by smart tools co. has a very smooth interface and inbuilt screen capture button.

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Abhishek Bhatnagar

Abhishek Bhatnagar, a known technology blogger & YouTuber from India. A Software Engineer by qualification, now he works as the editor-In-Chief, Webmaster, & Managing Director at Gadgets To Use. He runs a number of other technology websites as well.