At this week"s Mobile World Congress, Sony announced its Xperia Touch, an Android device that projects its user interface onto any flat surface, effectively creating a table-top computer with a 23-inch, touch-sensitive, high-definition display. It can also project onto walls at sizes up to 80 inches, using gesture support for navigation inputs at that scale.
The Xperia Touch is certainly a distinctive device, and there"s no denying that it"s a bit of a novelty. And priced at €1500 EUR when it goes on sale in the next few months, it will be an expensive curiosity - especially when you consider that it currently offers just one hour (yes, 1 hour - not a typo!) of battery life. Sony told me that it"s already working on boosting that to four hours.
Clearly, this isn"t the ideal mobile device then - but could it perhaps be a step in that direction? As the technology matures, and with further developments in battery life, this device could evolve into something far better and more complete - perhaps offering a novel solution for our growing desire for mobile devices with increasingly large displays.
It"s clear that the Xperia Touch is a long way from that right now - but it"s an intriguing step in that direction nonetheless. In the video below, we"ll run you through some of the Xperia Touch"s key features, along with some early impressions of the device:
Check out the rest of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2017 here, including hands-on videos with some of the other devices that have been announced so far.