Patent ID: 8825271

Claim:
A system for providing vehicle specific diagnostics for a vehicle using a smart phone, the system comprising: a vehicle decoder disposable in communication with the smart phone and configured to determine vehicle characteristic information based on vehicle identification information received from the smart phone, the vehicle characteristic information including the vehicle year, make and model; a diagnostic database having diagnostic solutions matched with symptomatic data, the diagnostic database being organized according to vehicle characteristic information; and a non-transitory computer readable medium downloadable onto the smart phone for configuring the smart phone to: display a symptomatic question sequence for the user; store symptomatic data received from the user; and communicate the symptomatic data to the diagnostic database; the diagnostic database being configured to match symptomatic data received from the smart phone with a diagnostic solution corresponding to the vehicle characteristic information of the vehicle; and wherein at least one of the vehicle decoder and the computer readable medium is configured to extract the vehicle identification information from a photograph of a vehicle identification number (VIN) received from the smart phone.