A company called MicroBlink released a neat mobile app that makes solving math equations as easy as taking a photo.
Available for iOS and Windows Phone — with Android version coming next year — PhotoMath will not only provide users with the end result, but will also show them steps taken to solve it.
Right now, the application can “cope” with middle school level of math, supporting basic arithmetics, fractions, decimals, powers, roots, linear equations and functions like log, exp, sin, cos. However, it’s limited to recognizing printed characters only, not handwritten text. PhotoMath won’t be able to help you with word problems, geometry or calculus, though.
Cheating at (math) tests just got easier, right? The answer to that question is resounding “yes,” but the idea is to encourage learning not cheating. If someone wants to cheat at a test, he’ll do it anyway, with the help of PhotoMath or not.
Unsurprisingly, the app has already got some serious traction. The PhotoMath video on Vimeo has very quickly reached 2 million views, while the iOS app alone was downloaded more than 1.6M times in less than three days, becoming the top free app in most countries around the world, according to the MicroBlink blog post.
At this stage, MicroBlink doesn’t plan to make money out of PhotoMath. The company’s Photoplay service is targeting banks and other financial institutions, allowing them to offer their customers the ability to pay bills by taking photos of them.
PhotoMath (FREE) [iTunes Link] [Windows Phone Marketplace]