Sony Mobile Communications recently launched the company's Android-based Xperia Sola that utilizes the "Floating touch" technology. The Xperia Sola is one of the smartphones launched by Sony since the company decided to drop the name "Ericsson" in their mobile business.

The Xperia Sola has dimensions of 116 x 59 x 9.9 mm. It also has a 3.7 inches screen TFT display with screen resolution of 480 x 854, 1 Ghz NovaThor dual core chipset, STE U8500 processor, and 512MB of RAM. In terms of storage, it has a capacity of 8GB internal memory with expendable memory option of up to 32GB through microSD. As for camera features, it has a 5MP camera and a second camera located at the front (MP not yet provided). It also has the usual smartphone features like 3.5mm audio/headset jack, GPS, WiFi, Media Playback, SMS, MMS, HTML Browser, and standard Apps (Alarm, Calendar, IM, and Weather). The Sony Xperia Sola would also have NFC (Near Field Communication) capability. As for its OS, the Sony Xperia Sola will first utilize Android 2.3 Gingerbread but it would soon be upgraded to the latest version of Android which is Android 4.0 or Android ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich).

As mentioned, one of the features of the Sony Xperia Sola is its "Floating Touch" technology. Sony described this feature stating that "the phone's capacitive touchscreen lets the device register a user's finger up to 20 millimeters above the screen, opening up new ways of interaction." This technology will be first utilized when using the phone's built-in Web browser and would later on be utilized in other applications. Some experts were not that surprised when this technology was introduced to smartphones since gesture recognition has been successful on gaming consoles. Francisco Jeronimo, research manager at IDC remarked on this topic stating "Just like 3D screens, it may not add that much to the user experience, but vendors like Sony need something to differentiate their phones from the competition".

If compared to the first 3 smartphones (Xperia Ion, S, and Acro HD) launched by Sony, the Xperia Sola could be categorized more in the mid-range level based on its features and specifications. The package included with Xperia Sola contains Xperia(TM) sola, embedded battery, 2 SmartTags, stereo headset, charger, micro USB cable for charging. The Xperia Sola is available in three colors: black, white, and red.

Sony has not yet announced any specific details about its price and availability but some reports are stating that it well be available in the market by the second quarter of 2012.