Meet the calculator's successor: PhotoMath app solves equations and sums in the blink of an eye

iOS and Windows Phone app uses optical character recognition to scan maths problems and solve them instantaneously

Smartphones have always made a bit of a mockery of your maths teacher’s mantra that ‘you won’t always have a calculator with you in the future’ but a new app named PhotoMath really puts the boot in.

Not only does it automatically scan and solve all sorts of equations using your smartphone’s camera, but it even gives users the step-by-step instructions on how to solve them – often the teacher’s best attempt to prove that a pupil used brain power, not silicon.

The app works near instantaneously (see the video below to watch it in action) and is currently available on both iOS and Windows Phone, with the Android version arriving some time in “early 2015”.

It works with basic arithmetic expressions, fractions and decimals, powers and roots and even simpler linear equations, and although its creators say it’ll be useful as a study aid, most teachers agree will agree that PhotoMath perhaps offers a little too much help.

PhotoMath from MicroBLINK on Vimeo.