[nlawalker]

Amusing aside - on iPhone, Tag Reader will automatically detect and scan the tag when you hold it in front of the lens. On Windows Phone 7, you have to press the "Scan" button to open the camera, turn off the flash (because it's on Auto by default, and unless the surroundings are very bright, taking a photo of something that close will trigger the flash and the tag will be washed out), snap a picture, and then wait a couple seconds to see if the app can read the tag. If it can't, you have to press "try again," where you get to go back to the camera, turn the flash off again, and try once more.

[kenjackson]

From the lock screen what are the steps from each device? From your description I can't tell really what is going on.

[nlawalker]

Ah, my bad.

On both platforms, you have to open the Tag Reader app. However, on iPhone, when you open the app, it puts you in the camera viewfinder. All you have to do is hold a Tag in front of the screen and the camera will detect and scan it in realtime and take you to the destination URL.

On WP7, opening Tag Reader takes you to an instruction screen with a big Scan button. Pressing Scan takes you to the camera viewfinder, where you have to snap a picture of the tag. After you snap, it processes for a second or two and then tells you if it was successful scanning the tag. If not, it opens the viewfinder again. On top of this, every time the viewfinder opens anew, the autoflash is turned on.

[kenjackson]

OK that makes sense. Fortunately for MS, this is the least of their WP7 worries right now.

[barista]

I think those limitations are from the way WP7 restricts access to the live camera view. I hope they fix that soon. A lot of cool scenarios can be unlocked if they do.