In this paper we introduce a proposal to provide students in labs with an alternative to the traditional visible range spectrophotometers, whose acquisition and maintenance entails high costs, based on smartphones. Our solution faced two aspects. On the one hand, the software for the smartphone, able to perform the typical functionalities of the traditional spectrophotometers. On the other hand, the portable peripheral support needed to capture the images to be analyzed in the smartphone. The promising results allow this solution to be applied in Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) contexts.