Sony Xperia Sola - Does manipulating a touchscreen without touching it equals magic?

The Sony Xperia Sola has one very interesting feature: the Floating Touch Display. This allows you to manipulate the touchscreen without actually touching the screen. It can detect your fingers floating a few millimeters over it. I really do not see many practical uses for this feature at the present time (unless it works with gloves).  Still if you want to keep your display finger print free...

Anyway, lets look at the other aspects of this phone.

Quick specifications:

• Android 2.3, with a announced upgrade to Android 4.0
• 3.7-inch, 480 x 854 LCD display, scratch resistant glass
• Floating touch display
• 8 GB storage (but only 4 GB available to the user), expandable to 32 GB via a MicroSD card slot.
• 512 MB of RAM
• Dual core 1 GHz processor, DB8500 graphical processing unit
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash
• None
• 720p video
• HSDPA 14.4 Mbps
• 1320 mAh battery
• Php16,990 suggested retail price

The Sola will cost Php3,000 more than the Sony Xperia U which has almost identical specifications. The Sola has a slight larger screen, the floating touch technology and, most importantly, expandable storage. I would be willing to pay the 3K for the expandable storage alone.

The Sony Xperia Sola is expected to hit the shelves in mid-may.