Sony has taken the wraps off of the sola, the latest smartphone in its Xperia line. From the outside, the Xperia sola appears to be your run-of-the-mill slab-style Android smartphone, but Sony was able to pack some new technology into the touchscreen that is designed to make it easier to navigate the web.

This new technology is called "floating touch," and it allows a user to hover their finger over the display to move what is akin to an invisible mouse cursor and then merely tap the screen once the desired link is highlighted. The sola is the first smartphone to use this new tech, but Sony says that it plans to bring it to other models in the future. The screen itself is a 3.7-inch, Reality Display powered by Sony's Mobile Bravia Engine with 854 x 480 pixels of resolution.

The sola is powered by a dual-core, 1GHz processor and it includes support for NFC, DLNA, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. There is a 5 megapixel rear camera with 720p HD video recording, though the sola appears to lack a front-facing camera. The phone measures 116mm x 59mm x 9.9mm (4.56in x 2.32in x 0.39in) and weighs 107g (3.77oz). Sony says that it will get about 5 hours of talk time or just under 20 days of standby with its included 1,320mAh battery.

The Xperia sola will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Sony's custom user interface when it launches. Sony says that an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is in the works for a summer 2012 release.

Sony plans to offer the Xperia sola in black, red, and white color options, and will launch it globally in Q2 of this year. Pricing information has yet to be announced.

Source: MobileBurn

Sony Xperia Sola Smartphone Pictures

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