14 DAY TRIAL // Although Sony’s presence at this year’s Mobile World Congress was pretty consistent, the Japanese company saved some launch announcements for after the trade fair.
The Xperia sola is the first device that Sony announced right after MWC 2012, so we didn’t have the chance to play with the smartphone while we were in Barcelona for the exhibition.
Even though this is not a high-end smartphone, Xperia sola brings a new technology into the mix with the purpose of making it more attractive for customers.
Dubbed Floating Touch, the innovative technology allows users to browse the Web by hovering their finger above the screen, so it acts like a moving cursor, without having to touch the screen.
Sony also mentioned it would improve this “floating touch” technology with the help of developers, by adding new user functionality and applications.
Apart from that, the smartphone doesn’t have anything else to make it standout from other Xperia NXT devices.
A small difference might be the fact that Xperia sola is equipped with ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 chipset that embeds a dual-core CPU clocked at 1 GHz.
The phone is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, but Sony promised an Ice Cream Sandwich update will be available soon after launch.
The Xperia sola comes with 8GB (5GB user available) of internal memory, 512MB of RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
The 3.7-inch float touch display supports 480 x 854 pixels resolution and is scratch-resistant. There’s also a 5-megapixel camera on the back, which features autofocus, LED flash and HD (720p) video recording.
Sony hints to a possible release of the phone in late May or early June, but no actual release date has been unveiled yet.
However, the phone has recently been spotted at FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which might indicate that the device is ready to take on North America.
