Everyone has been talking about iPhone OS 4, Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (that name still kills me) and what Google has up their sleeve for the Android OS. Amidst the confusion, hope, rumors and announcements, Microsoft was able to sneak out something totally unexpected. Enter the Kin.
If you haven’t heard of it, don’t worry, not many people have. It went public just yesterday and is an interesting sort of phone. There are two models appropriately named the Kine One and Kin Two. At their core, they resemble Windows Phone 7 with a few notable differences.
The Kin revolves around social media. The home screen, called “Loop” is an aggregate source for all of your social media information such as status updates from Facebook, Twitter, etc. “Spot” is a green dot that lets you drag content to it such as photos, maps, status updates and images to share with your contacts.
The Kin One is a small, almost exactly square device that slides open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. It has a QVGA screen, 5MP camera w/ LED flash and 4GB if internal storage. The Kin Two is rectangular for a traditional QWERTY keyboard. It boasts an HVGA screen, an 8MP cameras and 8GB of internal storage. Neither model show any signs of Flash or Silverlight in the browser; although both are capacitive with multi-touch capabilities (pinch/zoom). Both versions come with WiFi and Bluetooth as well as 3G.
Identical to Windows Phone 7 is the Zune music experience (without Zune gaming). If you’re a Mac user, don’t fret. It will sync with iTunes as well.
There are two major deficiencies in these devices. The first is simple. It will only pull updates every 15 minutes unless the user manually fetches new information by entering the feed app or locks/unlocks the phone (which forces an update). Microsoft said it was to prolong battery life but t he always-connected crowd may find that lack of data is a bigger issue than finding a wall outlet.
More importantly is the lack of an app store. That’s right. Neither version supports third-party apps in any way, nor will they in the future. You get whatever comes on the phone. What doesn’t come on the phone is a calendar app or the ability to send photos to Twitter for example. Both missing features make it clear that the target demographic is the 15- to 30-year old market.
Verizon is slated to be the sole carrier in the US in May (Vodaphone in Europe in the fall). No prices for the devices or carrier plans have been announced.
