Doc2email has one very simple purpose: convert an image taken by the iPhone camera into a fax document. This can then be sent via email to another person, or to a fax service for delivery to a standard fax machine.
After installation, setup is simple enough as all you need is your outgoing SMTP email settings. From there, it’s really a question of starting the application, using the camera to take the image and then emailing.
Destination email addresses can be manually plugged in or selected from addresses stored in iPhone’s Contacts application. Alternatively, one email address can also be preset to be populated on application startup.
Image Type
The other setting you need to consider is the image type – black and white, greyscale or colour. Of course, once you choose other than black and white the image size rises from sub-100k to around 1.5MB for greyscale and upto 5MB for colour. Whilst you may get a lovely colour image transmitted, you will be left with a very slow transmission; go and make a cup of tea.
In actual usage I found that Doc2email worked well and generally did what it said on the tin. However, there are two caveats:
- the iPhone’s camera needs to be used in good lighting
- it needs to be square on to the image, not at an angle
Doc2email does give a preview of the captured image, but despite the image looking fine (to my eye) the application would occasionally report an error stating “paper too slanted, borders will not be removed”. The resulting image would be worthless and have to be retaken. But repositioning the camera to be square on did make a difference and the converted fax image was quite usable.
The application is designed to transmit images of paper documents, not objects. But then you’d use the camera with the standard email application for that anyway.
Doc2email
Version reviewed: V1.01
Category: Business
Company: Roy Couchman
Current Price: £3.49
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch
UK App Store Link