Skip to main content

Use your iPhone’s camera to turn textbooks from boring to easy to read

summize 2 brings new features updated design scan
Les Shu/Digital Trends
Content summarization app Summize has released version 2.0 of its smartphone application, which brings along with it a host of new features and tools for condensing textbook content and news articles.

Founded by 18-year-old Rami Ghanem, Summize got off to an incredible start when it was released two months ago, topping the App Store charts in numerous countries.

The success came at a cost. Summize didn’t anticipate just how popular its textbook-parsing technology would become. As a result, its servers became overwhelmed and caused issues for many of its new users.

Summize

Immediately, Summize was pulled from the iOS App Store while its developers worked on beefing up the servers. It only took two days to get everything running smooth for its previous users, but rather than immediately putting Summize back up in the app store, the developers decided to use the break to improve the app from top to bottom.

Now, a month-and-a-half after being pulled from the App Store, Summize is back with a big 2.0 following its name.

Along with the update comes a new payment model, a completely redesigned interface, and five new features to further help users read through their summarized content.

Like its predecessor, Summize 2.0 works by letting users snap a photo of their textbook or news article and instantly receive a summary of the content. It’s effectively an app that can give you a Tl;dr version of your real-life reading material. And it only gets smarter the more it’s used, thanks to a self-teaching A.I.

https://twitter.com/rghanem1/status/732659652358340608

New in version 2.0 are a few additional features to further help users study and absorb the information in a more easily digestible manner. Specifically, Summize 2.0 includes a new grammar analysis tool that will run through the text of an essay and provide corrections, a new instant annotation tool for adding links and more to the summarized content, and even a flashcard tool for creating effortless flash cards.

One of the more welcomed additions to the update is a “save” feature. This will let users save their summaries for later viewing. Until now, any summaries were lost at the end of the session.

As for pricing, Summize 2.0 dropped its one-time cost and adopt a freemium model. New users will be given five scans for free. Once those allocations are used up, users are can pay $2 per month or $14 per year for unlimited summaries.

If users purchased the app for $1 when it originally went on sale as version 1.0 or 1.1, they’ll automatically be credited with a lifetime subscription in the 2.0 update.

Future plans for the Summize team includes expanding into different educational fields, such as history and chemistry.

Head on over to the iOS App Store to download Summize 2.0. If you’re the type of student this writer was in college, this will likely save you a few tenths on your GPA.

Editors' Recommendations

Apple finally fixed my biggest problem with the iPhone 14 Pro Max
apple fixed my biggest problem with iphone 14 pro max 1443

Good battery life is a well-known trait of the iPhone. As a battery-anxious person, it's one of the reasons why I shifted to iOS. The iPhone 13 Pro Max took it to the next level with excellent battery optimization that would see the phone last me an entire day with ease – no matter how heavy the usage. The same didn’t happen when I shifted to the iPhone 14 Pro Max. And it was primarily due to iOS 16. The initial versions, up until iOS 16.4, were buggy and bad with battery optimization.

I was about to move back to Android, but iOS 16.5 has me hooked. The update is one of the best in the recent past from Apple. While I’ve been testing iOS 17 for the past week on another iPhone, I installed iOS 16.5 in late May on my primary phone – the iPhone 14 Pro Max — and I’m extremely happy with what Apple has done with this version.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max's battery problem has finally been fixed
The chart shows 50% battery left after using the iPhone 14 Pro Max for 5 hours and 43 minutes. Prakhar Khanna/Digital Trends

Read more
Android is still beating the iPhone in a small (but important) way
Android App Timer on Google Pixel 6a and iOS App Limit on iPhone 11.

Our phones, as you know, can sometimes become depthless abysses. Almost everyone has experienced the inconquerable pull of spending hours switching from one social media or entertainment app futilely. And this routine even has a name -- "doomscrolling."

Thankfully, overlords that control the smartphone world, namely Google and Apple, have been conscious of this issue and offer tools that constantly remind you to spare your eyes from the screen and revisit the physical world to replenish your senses.

Read more
iOS 17 isn’t the iPhone update I was hoping for
iMessage stickers in iOS 17

Apple gave us a jam-packed WWDC 2023 keynote, and it was one of the most significant ones in years. After all, it introduced a brand new product category for Apple with the Vision Pro mixed reality headset. It’s basically as significant as when Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone in 2007, then the iPad in 2010, and when Tim Cook showed off the Apple Watch in 2014.

But the headset isn’t the only thing we got in the WWDC keynote. Since it’s a developer conference, it’s also about the software for all of our devices. This includes iOS 17 for the iPhone, along with iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS 14 Sonoma.

Read more