Microsoft Announces Two New Cell Phones
Meet the Kin One and the Kin Two.
At an event in San Francisco, Microsoft announced two social networking cell phones that the company will launch next month. Dubbed the Kin One and Kin Two, these phones will not run Windows Phone 7, the mobile OS Microsoft announced in February. Microsoft's Robbie Back said at the event that Windows Phone 7 is a general offering but this social phones for a specific audience.
So far the details about the two devices are actually pretty scant. The Kin Two didn't even make an appearance on stage; all demos were done with the Kin One, previously known as the Turtle.
The demonstrations we saw talked extensively about the UI but barely touched on the specs. One of the main things is that you can make the distinction between which friends you want to see updates from and which ones you don’t. Between all the people you have on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc., you can arrange things so that the handful of people you're close to in real life show up more often than the others. Microsoft's Derek Snyder referred to this as a sort of front row.
The home screen on this device is called the Loop. The Loop is sort of similar to Windows Phone 7's live tiles. It's a constantly updating stream of updates from your friends across all your social networking sites. This is where you'll benefit the most from selecting a smaller group of people to appear more often around your phone. We're guessing this would be way too crowded if all of your Facebook, MySpace and Twitter friends were all there at once.
The next thing is the Spot. The Spot is a little green blob at the bottom of the display which is basically an "instant share" zone. If you see something you want to share (be it a website, video, photo, blog, or whatever), you just drag the page to the spot and it shares it automatically to the person or people you want via the medium you've selected.
Lastly you've got the Kin Studio. Both of the Kin phones utilize cloud storage to a huge extent and they do this by storing everything on the Kin Studio. Everything you do on your phone, whether it's you contacts, your text messages, status updates, photos or videos is stored on your Kin Studio. You can view all of this information as a timeline too, so you can automatically pull up a certain day, week or month and check out how your phone looked at that time.
No word on pricing or launch. Verizon just said to look out for it sometime in May. We'll keep our eyes peeled for more information when it comes to specs. So far we know that the Kin One features a 5-megapixel camera and the Kin Two features an 8-megapixel camera that shoots in HD. They both pack an LED flash for taking pictures in low light settings. The Kin One comes with 4GB of storage and the Kin Two comes with twice that.
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crap.
Yes! More ways for teenage girls to wreck into me with their SUVs!
What is Microsoft adding to the market here, exactly?
Is this the answer to the iPhone? You know, the phone that had the least features of any other smartphone on the market, but because of a great UI and a great marketing campaign, to go along with an app store, became the main smartphone in America?... ... ...
Fire the design team. Kin Two lacks any originality what-so-ever and the Kin One is quite possibly the worst phone design I have ever seen. Then fire whoever was tasked with coming up with the name. Kin? One/Two? And then fire whoever thought that the only thing consumers want to do with their phones is social media.
sorry i am done dealing with any version of windows mobile
What is Microsoft adding to the market here, exactly? Is this the answer to the iPhone? You know, the phone that had the least features of any other smartphone on the market, but because of a great UI and a great marketing campaign, to go along with an app store, became the main smartphone in America?... ... ...
Could've swore the iphone's market share in the smart phone segment was not in the lead
Naw, you have to keep that guy. Anyone who can convince a big corporation that doing something unoriginal and stupid is a good enough idea to make a production model off of is clearly HQ CEO material.
At least it sounds like they've gotten enough backlash from users over WM7 (namely, it's lack of features) that they've back pedaled and spent more time freshening the UI of WM6.5.
Who really knows at this point what the heck is going on at MS?
A combination of sarcasm and hyperbole.
Looks like a pretty dumb phone marketed toward pretty dumb people. I really wish MS would have devoted these resources to making WP7 more feature complete at release. Maybe that way they would have had copy/paste and multitasking done in time. Unless these phones are free and come with discounted data-plans, I don't see a future for them.
Wait, do I actually see a smiley face key on those keyboards?
there is actually a (small... very small) market for phones that only do, like 3 or 4 things, instead of everything.
Could've swore the iphone's market share in the smart phone segment was not in the lead
It's not but it's probably one of the more popular smartphone handsets. Blackberry is the leader in the smartphone segment by a health percentage but the sales are spread out among a lot of different handsets. I have a Blackberry Bold 9000 and although I see a lot of people with blackberries I don't see any particular model as often as I see the iPhone 3g.
Interesting, we'll have to see how this pans out, of course like everything else you will need to wait for updates, to reduce bugs and and enhance functionality but seems ok. If you want to see the Kin 2 working check out this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWpuHGUP26o
I dunno, this looks perfect for the tween & teen crowd. I could see this taking off there.
Of course for those that are older and more into their gadgets, this probably wouldn't appeal, but I don't think they're trying to make it appeal to us anyway. We already have a myriad of devices, as well as their upcoming Windows Phone 7, to cover that demographic.
What's the world coming to? smdh!
their names:
1)rip-off
2)super rip off
Well, honestly I hope this works for Microsoft. I remain flaccid toward either of these phones, but I hope they do well because of the Zune marketplace that it will be pushing, which in the end may sell more Zunes which I think are superior to the ipood. If it is targeted toward younger people, older people that want to feel hip but don't really know what they are buying may get one (soccer moms). That 5 and 8 mega-pixel camera also poos on most of the competition for now...
These phones look like ugly babies.
Yet another f*@kin phone
ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz
Windows Mobile is all about business and secure communications. It supports certificates, domain enrollment, teathering, flawless Exchange sync, etc.
Now they're trying to take a business-centric phone and make it teen-hip. This is a huge marketing blunder on their part.
Or a marketing AWESOME...
Windows Mobile is all about business and secure communications. It supports certificates, domain enrollment, teathering, flawless Exchange sync, etc.Now they're trying to take a business-centric phone and make it teen-hip. This is a huge marketing blunder on their part.
Or a marketing AWESOME...
So this is their "Starter Edition", Windows Phone 7 is their "Ultimate".
So we wait for their Basic and Home Premiums. 
I thought I was reading an archived website of tomsguide.com (read: 1974) when Microsoft invented the Kin *twins* rotary hand-held phones.. but no.. sadly it's dated April 12, 2010.
Did the freaking creator just get out of Kindergarten? Kin 1 and Kin2, that’s like Dr Sues’ thing 1 and thing 2 and they looked better than these ugly things.
M$ is freaking stupid if they think these will sell. Unfortunately you will see how many stupid people there really are when they start buying them.
ugly as sin
Palm called, they want their phone back.
cmon microsoft...you're much better than this. Make a real Windows mobile 7, and make a phone that looks better than the average piece of crap. in fact, i want it better looking than the iPhone. cuz this is just ridiculous
Pretty sure the Kin One looks identical to the Motorola QA1...better known as Karma. There goes the link:
Microsoft needs to invest a little bit on their phone's design.