CES kicked off the New Year with a bunch of new tech reveals. One of the earlier surprises came from Samsung, who revealed a keyboard that is, quite literally, nothing—SelfieType.
SelfieType is a keyboardless mobile keyboard. It’s only a demo right now, and it uses your phone’s camera and A.I. processing in order to translate finger movements on an empty surface to key strokes.
SelfieType is a shared concept
Keyless keyboards already exist, but none are very good. They use lasers and are quite expensive for a keyboard that is typically laggy and inaccurate. They’re more a novelty than anything, offering far less than a standard cheap Bluetooth keyboard for several times the price.
SelfieType’s major advantage is that it’s essentially free. As long as you have a Samsung phone with a keyboard, you’ll have SelfieType. Presumably, the same would hold for any computer or tablet camera as well, if the tech extends that far. It’s unclear how effective it would be, but the theory seems cool, at least.
Worth it for the average consumer
In short, if SelfieType is free or even cheap to download, it will be hard to justify passing it up. It will likely be at least worth a shot, even as a novelty, even if you need something to prop up your phone to use it.
Unfortunately, it’s just a demo now, and not even a hands-on one. We have no way of knowing if it will be effective just yet. Hopefully we will be able to get our hands on this tech in the next couple of months to see if Samsung’s presentation was more than a swanky concept at a convention.
