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Sony intros Xperia Sola with no-need-to-touch screen

Cursor controlled with floating fingers

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Sony today introduced an Android smartphone, the Xperia Sola, that you can can control without touching.

The latest Sony handset features a "floating touch" navigation system, which detects hovering fingers as a cursor on the display and lets users surf the web without physically touching the screen. Until you need to click something, of course.

Fast forward 40 seconds or so into the following vid to see it in action:

The Xperia Sola features a 1GHz dual-core processor running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. An Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich update is promised for the the summer.

The Sola has a Bravia-branded 3.7in display, as well as a 5Mp camera with quick snap abilities, taking shots from standby in just over a second. Memory wise, there's 8GB of internal storage but if you need more, there is a microSD slot, expanding memory up to 32GB.

Sony Xperia Sola

As with its bigger sibling the Xperia S, the Sola sports NFC capabilities and comes with a bunch of data tags to trigger profile settings and set up file sharing.

The Sony Xperia Sola will launch in black, white and red versions in Q2 2012. Prices have yet to be set. ®

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Anonymous Coward

Re: New phone

Do you think this phone was created, engineered, prototyped and tested in 3 months?

It takes a while to get a phone to market and if all the hardware drivers, software and testing has been done on an older version it might not be so simple just to put the latest version on when it is released. Sony probably have about 10 phones that they are currently working on with timetables for release and they can only develop them with currently available software.

The Nexus phones will be used for the actual testing of the next Android release and therefore when it is available it will already be guaranteed to work and available for the latest Nexus phone.

2
0

I can see some use for that. Using the BBC mobile sport site can be a pain, as the text is fairly small for big fingers, and clicking on the wrong link isn't unusual. Being able to see which link you're going to click before pressing is a good idea.

Presume you still have to touch the screen to scroll etc, so no problem with holding your finger floating in mid air for long periods.

2
0

Shiny

but the "floating finger" is just begging to send pocket messages.

3
1

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