Sony Unveils The Xperia Sola: Look, Mom! No Hands!

Sony’s been bringing it lately, with a trifecta of monosyllabic Xperia goodness at CES and MWC. I personally believe that a key ingredient in the secret sauce may be Sony’s ability to keep the new phones classy — the Xperia S, U, and P all got high marks from us in terms of build, feel in the hand, and overall aesthetic quality. But the newest member of the Xperia clan may have trouble living up to the standard; that is, if the reality of this “floating touch” thing is anything close to what I’m imagining.

The freshly announced Sony Xperia Sola is definitely trying to be a forward-thinking phone. Sony’s packed it full of fun technology like NFC-enabled Xperia SmartTags, a (relatively small, yet actually perfectly proportioned) 3.7-inch Reality Display with a Sony Mobile Bravia Engine, 3D surround sound audio tech, and access to the new Sony Entertainment Network. Oh, and we can’t forget that whole “floating touch” thing.

The idea is that you hover your finger above the screen, “so it acts like a moving cursor” without ever having to actually touch the screen. Then you can highlight and tap links to load the page. I’m not exactly sure about the potential of this, nor the need, but we’ll just wait and see.

The newest Xperia will come in white, red and black color flavors in Q2, and while it’ll ship with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Sony says it should see ICS by summer. We have no word yet on pricing.