The Sony Xperia Sola was just announced a couple of days ago, and we have managed to get our hands on a prototype this morning. The handset does not come from a single block of aluminum as many other smartphone designs tend to sport these days, although it has a solid feel despite being made out of white plastic for its back panel. You will not find the transparent band that lights up in different colors depending on what you are doing on the display though, but that is not what we are here to talk about. The Sony Xperia Sola that was paraded is still in the prototype stage, and hence the scrolling of the menu was less than smooth, and we do expect to see that kink ironed out before the smartphone is released to the masses officially. Known as the MT27i, the Xperia Sola ran on Android 2.3.7, where we fully expect Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to arrive as an update (or even better yet, right out of the box) in the future. Do enjoy more on the Xperia Sola after the jump, including an image gallery.
I had some trouble getting the Xperia SmartTags to work with the Xperia Sola, as touching the SmartTags with the handset did not automatically change the settings on the phone all the time, as it was rather unresponsive. I would boil that down to this still being a prototyped, although during those moments when it worked, it was like magic. I do hope that the SmartTags are made out of high quality material, otherwise placing one of them in a car for folks who live in extremely hot weather might be folly, if the vehicle is going to be parked under the sun most of the time. The “floating touch” technology might be seen as some to be a gimmick, but aren’t most of what we take for granted today in the world of modern technology touted as gimmicks when it was first launched? I do look forward to a more polished unit when it finally arrives.
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