Sony has introduced the Xperia Sola smartphone with a new home-grown technology called 'floating touch', which allows you to navigate without touching the screen. It is currently limited to the phone's web browser only. With its latest innovation, will Sony succeed in launching a new trend in the smartphone world, or will it stand out again with a new gadget?
Last week, the manufacturer also unveiled its latest product, theXperia Sola, a technological innovation, the screen that allows you to browse the Internet without touching it: a simple touch of the finger allows you to select a link, for example, and then just touch the screen to open the new Internet page.
According to Sony, this technology, known as "floating touch", would reduce handling errors. "You'll never open the wrong link by mistake again," promise the company's Japanese developers. And for good reason, the system in question makes it possible to anticipate where the user is going to put his finger.
The display integrates two sensors. The first one, called autocapacitive, detects the fingertip up to 2 centimetres. To do this, it generates an electric field large enough to be modified by the presence of a remote finger. On the other hand, the second sensor, called "mutual capacitive", provides nothing more than the usual options of a touch screen. Individually, these two capacitive sensors are inoperative. Together they can identify and interpret both the gestures made at a distance and the contact with the screen.
Available in the coming months, the Sony Xperia Sola will allow you to browse the web using a touchless screen. This demonstration video from Sony illustrates all the benefits of floating touch technology. Sony, YouTube
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Developed in collaboration with Cypress Technologies, the "floating touch" currently applies only to Web browsing. However, Sony engineers explain on their blog that they are considering making the technology compatible with other applications.
Xperia Sola, a mid-range smartphone
Equipped with a 3.7-inch (854 x 480 pixels) screen and featuring this particular technology, the Xperia Sola runs on Android 2.3. Under the hood, it is powered by a dual-core Ericsson processor running at 1 GHz, supported by 512 MB of memory, 8 GB of storage memory that can be expanded to 32 GB with a microSD card.
The Sola is also equipped with a 5 megapixel camera that can be used as a video camera (720 pixels). On the connectivity side, the phone is equipped with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB and HDMI. It is also LDNA compatible.
Like the Xperia S, the phone also incorporates a Near Field Communication (NFC) module. It is therefore compatible withXperia SmartTags, the small tokens that allow you to change the phone's configuration when it is in close proximity.
Its launch is scheduled for the end of April, at a price of 329 euros... The price to pay for having (almost) no more fingerprints on the screen! (Source : Futura Sciences)
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