Shopper handhelds: check a price, scan as you shop, hand the basket to the till

A shop keeps a few handheld devices at the door. A shopper picks one up and uses it for one of two things: point it at any product to see today's shelf price, the running offer and the aisle, or do the whole shop with it, scanning each item and setting the quantity as they go, so the basket is built before they ever reach a till.

At the end there are two ways to finish. Take it to the till: the basket goes ahead of the shopper as a held sale in the shop's own till system and the device shows a short code; the shopper walks to any till, the cashier recalls the code and the sale is already rung up, so they pay as usual by card, cash or account with nothing to re-scan. Or order it from the shop: the basket lands on a new Home › Shop orders page in Isletek with the shopper's name and phone, the team picks and packs it, and it is either pushed to the till for collection or marked for delivery. The device never takes a payment.

The device is a smartphone in a thick case so it does not read as a phone: a rugged Android such as the Samsung Galaxy XCover7, locked to the Isletek app in kiosk mode and signed in as a device account of the shop. It scans with its camera through the same camera strip goods-in already uses, charges on a shelf at the door, and is cheap enough to put three or four in every shop.

What ships first: the device screens, the price and offer lookup, the basket, the Shop orders page with its count in the Home column, and the push to the till, verified against the shop PC's own suspended-sale tables before anything is written. Pay-on-device is deliberately out: the shop keeps control of every payment at the till.