Samsung’s leaked Pie Beta reveals a floating keyboard mode


Floating Keyboard

It’s not a secret anymore that Samsung is planning to kick off an Android 9.0 Pie beta program for the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus. During the past few days, a lot of leaked builds have surfaced allowing users to experiment the newest version on their Snapdragon powered S9, S9+, and Note9.

In the latest leaked build for the Galaxy S9, the South Korean manufacturer added a floating keyboard feature to the built-in keyboard. The feature is very similar to the one recently released by Google on Gboard.

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However, the concept of floating keyboards isn’t something new for Samsung. The feature was packed on the Galaxy S5 running Android 4.4 in the glorious time of TouchWiz, the feature was removed in subsequent updates. The original floating keyboard concept allows the user to open a pop-up keyboard that can move around the screen, improving the one-handed usability.

This feature now is much more useful than before, since smartphones larger than 6-inch are a reality. The Galaxy S10 Plus, for example, is expected to boast a 6.44-inch infinite display. Currently, the Samsung Experience 10 UI is still in development stages, but we can see a clear moving towards one-handed usage. The Floating Keyboard is naturally, another move from Samsung to help with the taller displays.

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