> these have both been built-in for years.

If Android has a built-in QR scanner now, that must be something that came with Android 11, but September 8 2020 cannot qualify as "for years". It takes a while for OEM's to catch up as well.

There are certainly Android phones that ships with this feature (QR-scanner), but stock Android 10 does not. (Google lens != Standard Photo app).

If you know about it, you can start "Google lens" app, but that app does not even come up as a suggestion when you type QR scanner into the play store. I.e. even when you have a QR scanner available on your phone, you wouldn't know unless you somehow knew about "Google lens".

I even have a pixel3 and forgot Lens existed; the first time I was exposed to it by the phone it looked like yet another Google scans all your stuff and gives you questionable suggestions feature. It never occurred to me it would do something as straightforward as decode QRs.

I have a Pixel 3a, and I'm pretty sure it's done this since it was new (Spring 2019). I also thought my previous phone (Pixel 1) did it, though I don't have anymore and can't check.

There are many phones that have it (and have had it for a while like the Pixel it seems). Some can also enable Google lens from within the camera app, I cannot though on stock Android version 10.

I think it was announced in Google I/O 2018 but here is a link [1] talking about in in fall 2018.

[1] https://medium.com/turunen/built-in-qr-reader-on-android-696...