Is Samsung about to "kill" the on-screen keyboard at CES 2020?

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Samsung to unveil Selfie Type at CES 2020
Samsung started 2020 with a bang, unveiling a Galaxy S10 Lite and a Galaxy Note 10 Lite seemingly out of the blue, as well as confirming that the Galaxy S11 (S20) flagships  will be unveiled on February 11. That's a lot of Samsung-related news for the first week of 2020, but things are just getting started.

Although not as exciting, Samsung has just hinted at a cool new party trick that its phones might score very soon. Dubbed SelfieType, it will be revealed at CES 2020 imminently, and will allow you to type with the help of the front-facing camera. Quite similar to the hit-or-miss laser keyboard projectors that came to be a couple of years ago, Samsung intends to intelligently observe your fingers as you type on a flat surface and interpret the input accordingly.

Samsung says the feature couples raw image input from the camera with AI to match the exact position of your fingers to type without having to resort to physical buttons. As revealed in the Samsung Members blog post detailing it, the feature currently supports English only, but more languages will probably come in the future if SelfieType proves to be successful. 

One of the immediate downsides of this technology is the fact that it could only be seen as valuable from experienced touch-typists who don't need to look at a keyboard to type. If you "hunt and peck" while typing on a real or virtual keyboard, SelfieType will most certainly not a feature you'd want to use. 

Samsung's CES 2020 keynote is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. PT on Monday, January 6; we will likely hear more about SelfieType then. 

Check it out in action right below, but have in mind that it might not work as effortlessly in real life as in this promo video. 

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