Samsung may unveil a new smartphone keyboard at CES 2020 It's not physical, and it's not on-screen

Its name is Selfie Type, and it uses the Galaxy's selfie camera and AI to track your hands, allowing you to type on an invisible, full-sized keyboard on any surface It may sound like a gimmick, but this could actually be great Let's take a look

At first glance, Selfie Type reminded me of the clunky and basically useless laser-based projection keyboard from the Sharper Image catalog That one projected a keyboard on a desk, and you hit keys drawn by a laser Tracking wasn't much better, and it was less fast and accurate than the software keyboards on cell phones

The Selfie Type requires no peripherals and does not project anything Instead, it simply uses the Galaxy's camera to track your hands as you memory type According to information posted by users on Samsung's community site, "Selfie Type is a technology that uses the front camera and AI to analyze the position of your fingers and type without using physical buttons"

According to sources claiming that Samsung will introduce it at CES 2020 this week, it is currently only supported in English Simply place your phone or tablet in portrait mode, set it to L mode if it is a Galaxy Fold, and start typing by moving your fingers as if you were hitting actual keys; Selfie Type also appears to support gestures, so you can pinch in the air to send a message, for example

Selfie Type reminds me of Leap Motion's augmented reality "wearables" (pictured above) Developed by Keiichi Matsuda, these virtual devices also rely on cameras to accurately track your hands in 3D space

Unlike Matsuda's AR gadget, however, Selfie Type does not provide any visual feedback That's not necessarily a bad thing For many people who type on a physical keyboard, typing is a mechanical memory operation I never look at the keyboard while typing at all

Yes, my hands have memorized the positions of the keys, and I rely on the space bar for the correct position of the keys in order to type quickly But that's where AI comes into play, as in Gboard's finger-sliding

Of course, that means Selfie Type is not for everyone, but it also means that it does not slow down the target user because the memory typist does not have to hit the exact target If AI is truly smart and can correct mistakes on the fly, there is no reason why it can't All my fears about the odd keyboard concept being auto-corrected on the fly have disappeared with Finger Slide Typing I use it every day, and while it doesn't match the typing speed of a physical keyboard, it does a really good job

If the Selfie Type really works as well as it does in the demo video, I will be using it regularly Unless you have a folding phone or a tablet with a built-in stand, you won't even need to put your phone on the stand, which is the only drawback of the Selfie Type

Samsung's CES 2020 press conference opens today (January 6) at 6:30 PM PT/9:30 PM ET, and in addition to various new 5G and smart home products, the Selfie Type could make its official debut For the latest updates from Las Vegas, bookmark the CES 2020 news hub