Sony Mobile continues to bring new features to smartphones, whether that be joypads, illuminating notification bars or WhiteMagic displays. The recently announced Sony Xperia sola has one of the most unusual features yet seen, floating touch technology. Some are already saying this is a gimmick, but we can see this as having some real use. Floating touch allows you to browse the phone much like a cursor on a PC and let’s not forget you’ll also be able to operate the phone with non-conductive material (like a pair of gloves).
Sony Mobile developed the screen with Cypress Technologies and has explained in more detail exactly how this technology works. Basically, Sony Mobile has combined two types of capacitive sensors: self-capacitance and mutual capacitance. Self-capacitance has a greater signal strength allowing detection up to 20mm away from the screen, however a limitation with this is that it is single-touch only. To overcome this, Sony has added a mutual capacitance sensor too, which gives you multi-touch. Click here to read about this technology in more detail.
