[michaelt]

15 years ago, if you were a delivery company you might use something like a Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1 in each van. Rugged, built-in GPS and 3G, and it runs a full copy of Windows XP. You want a dashboard-mounted docking station? How about a docking station designed for 100,000 connect-disconnect cycles?

The barcode scanner, believe it or not, was useful to scan barcodes.

These days a smartphone is a much better choice.

[Cthulhu_]

Not for scanning barcodes; I've seen them in action, they're noticeably slower and the image processing seems more involved than whatever magic is in barcode scanners.

[wkat4242]

You can also get "smartphones" (Android handhelds) with a true laser scanning barcode reader. We have them at work. Like Zebra devices.

They sure beat camera based ones yes (although they technically also use a camera but it's really optimised for the purpose)

Most of the couriers that come to my door also use these or similar, not standard smartphones.

[nereye]

The barcode scanning in the Libib app (an app to keep track of books) seems quite fast, it is quite addictive to just zap the barcodes and see the book data added to the catalog.

It seems comparable to the laser based scanners used at library checkouts for example.

[dialup_sounds]

The magic is just software. There are extremely fast barcode scanning libraries available, e.g. Scandit.

[somerandomqaguy]

To a degree, the dedicated barcode scanners is still a fair bit faster. So anything dealing with high volumes of barcodes like warehousing inventory or store stock management benefits from a dedicated scanner.