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Samsung Galaxy app teams SMS with augmented reality

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Posted 19th July 2010 at 11:13am by Marie-Louise Abretti

samsung galaxy road sms

Samsung is aiming to make texting on the move less hazardous thanks to a new Android app called Road SMS, which uses live images from your phone's camera as a backdrop to the onscreen keypad.

See the app in action in the clip below

The purpose of Road SMS is to allow users of Android smartphones to almost literally see through their phones as they text, making the whole thing look like a transparent piece of glass and ideally alerting you to obstacles in your path without requiring you to look away from the screen.

Samsung has made the Road SMS app for the Galaxy S smartphone rather than the wider Android community as it is not on the Android Market but Samsung's own app store, according to the Slashgear Android Community.

This kind of pseudo-augmented reality application is a nice touch that other software developers are sure to copy. However, it will probably make using your smartphone to text a rather more battery-intensive task.

Clearly the use of this app is by no means a substitute for remaining alert and aware as to your surroundings. Whether users will actually point the phone straight ahead or at the ground is also anyone's guess.

More news on: Text messaging, Apps & software, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy, Samsung Galaxy Lite i5700, Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy mobile phones

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  • Techtotaller, 19th July 2010.

    Can deffo see Android fone apps going this way, i.e companies coming up with exclusive ones that only run on their models. It's the best way of distinguishing your phones from all the other Android ones out there. At least, until the copycat ones come along...

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