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QR codes seems to be living on borrowed time, saved from obscurity by the pandemic.

Why can't my phone just read a printed URL by now? There's no reason the same information can't be human readable as well as easy for my phone to scan.

I suppose it would require some kind of design paradigm to really denote text that could also be scanned, maybe a specific font style.

Anyway it seem likely to me QR codes are eventually replaced by simple text.

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QR is more compact and higher accuracy.

And not human readable, is my point. The value tradeoff in accuracy and compactness is the question. Will that be enough to sustain QR codes? I don't think so.

Also most QR codes seem to include a text url nearby the code anyway, so there goes the "compactness" argument. In that case it's redundant information as well.

The compactness refers to the length of the url. Most mobile oriented stuff prefers portrait orientation.

Not to mention colors, fonts etc. QR avoids all these issues. Maybe something better will come along but will have similarities.

QR has the same contrast requirement for colors to be read.

I'm not sure about this compactness idea, especially since the text url is usually right there with the QR code, in the same space.

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