Microsoft Unveils Kin One And Kin Two
With the iPad and iPhone O S 4.0 recently announced by Apple, Microsoft is now poised to present their latest developments to stay competitive in the ever-changing market of mobile technology for communication and internet access. These products by Microsoft come in the form of two handsets called the Kin One and the Kin Two and they are being marketed as Windows phones. Here’s a rundown of these brand new handsets.
The Kin One and Kin Two are based on the Windows Phone 7 but they have some unique differences. The Kin series has its own custom-made user interface which is very focused on social media and also has a custom browser. The screen displays are multi-touch capable and you can even pinch and zoom with the browser. However, there is no support for third party applications, in-browser Flash or Silverlight.
The Kin One is also known as the “Turtle”. It’s a curved square sliding phone equipped with a QVGA display, 4GB of internal storage, a five megapixel camera with LED and a full QWERTY keyboard. Meanwhile, Kin Two is nicknamed “Pure”. It’s a more conventional QWERTY sliding phone with a HVGA display, an eight megapixel camera and 8GB of internal storage. Beyond that, it’s the same as the Kin One.
Other features of the Kin series include WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G cellular radios. Furthermore, photos and videos collected by the user are easily synced with your online storage, which can hold a lot of stuff. Then your collection can be accessed by phone through the browser and you can get the full content by downloading it. The Kin phones also come with a desktop internet experience completely based on Silverlight for viewing and organizing the usual stuff on your phone, such as contacts, social network status updates, images, etc.
Microsoft also emphasized the Kin phones’ new UI features, which are based on blocky, simple text, monochromatic elements, and zoomed-in, stylized pictures. These features are called Spot and Loop. Loop is used with the Kin home screen, allowing you to view messages and other social content from friends who use Twitter and Facebook and you can prioritize the arrangement so you’ll only see the content and updates you want to see. But Spot appears as a green dot at the bottom of the screen, which enables you to drag content that includes maps, images, status, updates and videos so you can share them with your friends. So, Spot works much like including an attachment when you send a message. The Kin series is also compatible with Zune music and video, similar to the Zune HD UI on Windows Phone 7. Microsoft also is including a Mac-compatible music side-loader for Mac users. You can connect to iTunes and sync non-DRM content but you won’t be able to shop for music.
Finally, these new phones are compatible with over-the-air firmware updates but they don’t support data tethering. Kin One and Two are set to come to Verizon in May while Vodafone has become the European partner for a fall release. Unfortunately, information on pricing and general consumer access isn’t available at this time.
Tags: handset technology, Kin one, Kin One and Kin Two, kin two, Microsoft
