Sony has just announced a brand new smartphone to its Xperia line-up, the Xperia Sola. It is the same Xperia Pepper aka MT27i which was leaked a numerous times. The smartphone features a new display technology “floating touch” which enables to users to navigate with fingers a few millimetres above the touchscreen which sounds pretty cool.

The device features the same design sense which we came across first by Xperia S and then followed by Xperia P and U. The Sola has a 3.7-inch 854×480 pixel display with the Mobile Bravia engine, a 1GHz dual-core NovaThor U8500 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash and 720p HD video recording, and 8GB of built-in storage. It runs Gingerbread but an ICS update has been promised sometime in Q2.

The device is 9.9mm-thick and weighs 107 grams, and will be available in black, white and red colours. As for connectivity options, it features 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA and hotspot functionality, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DO, microUSB 2.0, stereo FM with RDS, and NFC – the device will come with two NFC Sony SmartTags.It also includes xLOUD and 3D surround sound audio technology and we already mentioned about the “floating touch technology”. It runs on a 1,320 mAh battery, rated to deliver up to 470 hours of standby time, 6 hours of talk time, and 40 hours of continuous music playback.

Sony France recently tweeted that the Xperia Sola should be arriving on week 17 for €329 (around $430).

Sony Xperia Sola