T-Mobile may start using QR codes to streamline device pickup

Are smartphone users afraid of anything more than dealing with their cellular carrier? Too often, dealing with your career becomes an exercise in anxiety and frustration, so we’ll be excited whenever we’re given the chance to streamline part of that process. And luckily for T-Mobile users, we may have seen a convenient new change coming their way.

The past year hasn’t been easy for T-Mobile customers, and we’ve heard a lot of complaints over the carrier’s change to push all services onto its new T-Life app. Regardless of how you feel about that change, our latest discovery has the potential to alleviate at least one problem when you need to visit a T-Mobile store to pick up a handset.

Looking at version 11.5.2 of the T-Life app for Android, we’ve identified some text strings that appear to be new and reference a device pickup option that takes advantage of QR codes.

At least, we don’t currently know of any such option for picking up hardware at T-Mobile stores via QR code – let us know in the comments if you’ve already experienced it.

Some of the other labels here give us a sense that this support won’t be universal — or, at least, won’t apply everywhere, all at once. The app seems to be able to check if specific stores are equipped to support this type of QR-based pickup, and likely won’t present the option to users if it’s not available:

Of course, we’re giving T-Mobile the benefit of the doubt that this new workflow will actually improve the in-store experience for its customers; At least, it feels like progress. However, whether the implementation will ultimately live up to our expectations still remains to be seen.

The T-Life app already supports multiple QR code interactions, such as scanning to set up a home internet gateway. Expanding it to help streamline device pickup sounds like a smart move in our book. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some user reports of actually trying it out soon.