Here's how Samsung's crazy invisible keyboard tech will work

A link to an unreleased video of Samsung’s magical invisible keyboard tech just popped up on its Korean community website. Called Selfie Type, Samsung has previously shared some details about the project but we haven’t seen it in action — until now.

The demo video shows how the new keyboard input method works across phones, tablets, and foldables placed in a range of orientations. We also see it being used to type emails, notes, and text messages.

How does Selfie Type work?

Selfie Type is a project of Samsung’s in-house idea incubator C-Labs and delivers a virtual keyboard to users with the help of an AI algorithm and a front-facing camera. No additional hardware is required to set it up.

It allows users to type without physically touching their device’s on-screen keyboard. How accurate is it with tracking keystrokes remains to be seen, but the demo video certainly looks promising.

An email being typed in the video suggests that Selfie Type will be released to Samsung users as an update. I’d wager a guess that the feature should be available to all current Samsung flagships on release, more so since all it seemingly requires is a front-facing camera. Details remain scarce, but Samsung has officially confirmed is that the tech analyzes finger movements coming from the front camera, and converts them into QWERTY keyboard inputs.

Samsung is expected to officially demo Selfie Type at CES 2020. We should know more about the virtual keyboard in the next few days.