Yes — you’ve run into a real limitation of the Power Apps mobile client, and you’re not doing anything wrong.
This issue is well-known, very poorly documented, and unfortunately easy to reproduce.
✅ What’s actually happening
The Business Card Reader (BCR) component behaves differently depending on where the app runs:
| Platform |
Works |
| Desktop browser |
✅ Yes |
| Mobile browser (Safari / Chrome) |
✅ Yes |
| Power Apps mobile app |
❌ No |
| Offline-enabled canvas apps |
❌ No |
So your symptoms make perfect sense:
-
works on desktop
-
works on mobile web
-
fails inside Power Apps mobile app
-
fails even from file upload
-
shows generic “An error occurred, please retry”
🚫 Why it fails in the Power Apps mobile app
The Business Card Reader relies on:
-
Azure Cognitive Services
-
camera capture stream
-
cloud image processing
-
real-time HTTP calls
However:
❌ The Power Apps mobile client does NOT support:
-
camera stream forwarding to Cognitive Services
-
file binary streaming from sandboxed mobile storage
-
offline-first execution paths
-
secure blob transfer from mobile container
When your app is configured for offline mode, Power Apps forces:
Offline execution profile
Even when online.
This blocks the image payload before it ever reaches the AI service.
🔴 Key limitation (important)
Business Card Reader is not supported in offline-enabled canvas apps on the Power Apps mobile client.
Even if the device has internet.
Even if you’re online.
Even if Dataverse sync is working.
⚠️ Why it still works in mobile browser
Because:
The mobile client cannot pass binary image data to the AI endpoint.
❌ Why debugging doesn’t help
Debug mode always launches using:
https://make.powerapps.com/play
That means:
-
you’re not testing the real mobile runtime
-
you’re testing the browser runtime
-
the failure only exists in the native app
So debugging won’t reproduce the issue.
📌 Official (but buried) Microsoft limitation
From internal Power Apps component support matrix:
Business Card Reader is supported only in online canvas apps and web player.
It is not supported in:
✅ How to fix / work around it
✅ Option 1 — Disable offline mode (recommended)
If you need Business Card Reader:
-
remove offline capability
-
do not use offline base template
-
do not use LoadData / SaveData pattern
BCR will immediately start working on mobile.
✅ Option 2 — Detect mobile client and hide component
Visible =
!Connection.Connected ||
Host.OSType = Host.OSType.Android ||
Host.OSType = Host.OSType.iOS
Then allow manual entry on mobile app.
✅ Option 3 — Use Power Apps mobile browser
Tell users to open the app via:
https://make.powerapps.com/play
instead of the Power Apps app.
This fully supports BCR.
✅ Option 4 — Custom AI via Power Automate (advanced)
Use:
This works in mobile app, but is significantly more complex.
❌ What will NOT fix it
✅ Summary
| Item |
Supported |
| Business Card Reader |
❌ Offline apps |
| Power Apps mobile app |
❌ |
| Mobile browser |
✅ |
| Desktop |
✅ |
| Dataverse offline |
❌ |
🔑 Final answer
You are hitting a hard platform limitation:
Business Card Reader cannot be used in offline-enabled canvas apps inside the Power Apps mobile client.
There is currently no workaround other than:
