Sony Mobile Communications today announced Xperia sola. The smartphone debuts Sony's floating touch feature and it is powered by the Android OS.

Xperia sola will be available globally in black, white and red in the second quarter.

Making its smartphone debut exclusively on Xperia sola, Sony's floating touch lets users navigate the web by hovering their finger above the screen so it acts like a moving curser, without actually having to touch the screen. Once the desired link is found it can be highlighted and a tap will load the page.

By touching an NFC Android smartphone on a SmartTag, a pre-configured profile in the smartphone will launch. The two SmartTags included with Xperia sola can be personalized with up to 10 commands. Out of the box one is ready for the living room to turn on Wi-Fi and launch Google news and weather apps, and the other one for the bedroom, which turns on the alarm and switches to silent mode. Xperia sola supports NFC pairing, allowing users top connect their devices with other NFC smartphones, applications and services by tapping their smartphones together.

Xperia sola also boasts a 3.7" Reality Display (854 x 480 pixels, 16,000,000 colour TFT) powered by Mobile BRAVIA Engine, xLOUD and 3D surround sound audio technology, a 1GHz STE U8500 dual-core processor, 8 GB internal storage amd microSD memory card slot (supporting up to 32GB). The phone also omes with fast capture to take the camera from sleep to snap in a little over a second with a single key press.

Users can also access Sony Entertainment Network, where they can watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters on Video Unlimited or listen to songs through Music Unlimited.

The phone is launching on Android platform 2.3, with an upgrade to Android 4.0 coming in the summer.