We’ve a soft spot for augmented reality (AR) apps and a dislike of walking into lampposts, so Samsung’s new Road SMS app for the Galaxy S satisfies both our hunger for gimmicks and personal safety.  Available exclusively through the Samsung Apps download store on the Galaxy S – and, we’re guessing, on the Vibrant, Captivate and any other Galaxy S variant the company pushes out – the Road SMS app basically overlays a QWERTY keyboard on top of a live view from the phone’s camera.

That means you can strut along the street, texting away to your hearts content, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for open manhole covers, angry dogs or stray celebrities.  Unfortunately the app itself is pretty basic: all you have is a keyboard, a shortcut to choose the message recipient and a character counter (which seems to want to limit messages to 80 rather than the more usual 160 characters); there’s no way to browse incoming messages or indeed take a photo for an MMS.

Still, as a free gimmick it’s pretty neat, and we imagine someone will soon rip it from the Samsung ROM and offer it on other custom installs for rival handsets.  Full demo in the video below.

Samsung Road SMS on the Galaxy S: