Modern mobile phones or smartphones have become a pervasive and affordable device for users at different levels of age around the world. Smartphones equipped with many useful sensors, including camera, barometer, accelerometer, and digital compass. The sensors on smartphones attracted researchers and developers to develop mobile applications (apps) and study the potential use of the sensors to support daily life activities. Unlike other types of sensor, the smartphone camera has been underutilized. Analysis
of the literature suggested that smartphone camera mainly serves for personal and social photography.
Practically, a smartphone camera can be used as an imaging device for reading a barcode. Although
barcode has been used for identifying products and items, the use of a smartphone camera as a reading
device has not been explored thoroughly. Further, scholarly resources describing the fundamental
knowledge of smartphone camera barcode reading is not available in the literature which could be the
reason contributed to slow research progress of the domain. Therefore, this study aims to review the current trends and future directions of smartphone camera for barcode reading. Specifically, the study reviews the
literature on the types of applications that are currently available and run on the standard mobile platform for reading a barcode. It also analyzes the necessary components that made up barcode reading apps. Further, the review identifies technical and non-technical issues that are critical for the development of the apps. The contributions of this work are twofold, first, it provides the fundamental knowledge on the
building blocks of camera barcode reading apps, and second, it explores the issues in the current camera barcode reading apps that could encourage exploration towards addressing the issues. Practically, the findings could spark new research ideas to address the current issues related to the use of smartphone camera for barcode reading in the near future
