Microsoft announces Kin One and Kin Two social networking phones

[AstroManLuca]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-kin-one-and-kin-two-announced-windows-phone-roots-wit/

http://gizmodo.com/5515310/microsoft-kin-hands+on-videos

They look like feature phones except with a variation of MOTOBLUR. A couple things from the videos in the second link caught my attention:

- They have 5 MP and 8 MP cameras, respectively
- At least the higher end model can shoot 720p video
- All the pictures and videos you take are uploaded to an online repository, no need to back up your stuff

They also seem to look a lot like the Palm Pre.

Not sure I'd want one myself but it might be good for certain people. Maybe kids/teens.

 

[zerocool84]

Not sure I'd want one myself but it might be good for certain people. Maybe kids/teens.

Yea definitely not one of those flagship phones but still cool. I could see my little cousins getting these.

 

[WelshBloke]

They look 'kin useless. They need to stop following apple and start doing their own 'kin thing again.

 

[QueBert]

They look 'kin useless. They need to stop following apple and start doing their own 'kin thing again.

Their own thing doesn't work, I have a WM6.1 phone and it was pretty terrible, even when it came out and was new. They should stick to OS's, they got Windows 7 almost right. The rest of their products I don't even want to touch. This will be a failure, but when you have a bazillion dollars like they do, I guess it's no big deal to release a product you know will fail before it's even out.

 

[WelshBloke]

Their own thing doesn't work, I have a WM6.1 phone and it was pretty terrible, even when it came out and was new. They should stick to OS's, they got Windows 7 almost right. The rest of their products I don't even want to touch. This will be a failure, but when you have a bazillion dollars like they do, I guess it's no big deal to release a product you know will fail before it's even out.

Go on, I know I shouldn't encourage you but what exactly was worse about your WM6.1 phone compared to its competitors?

 

[QueBert]

Go on, I know I shouldn't encourage you but what exactly was worse about your WM6.1 phone compared to its competitors?

I had to do a hard reset 4 times in 1 year, getting it to actually sync with ActiveSync was a coin flip. And it was just butt slow. I loved the keyboard and I liked how I could install whatever I want. But it was a pretty pathetic OS.

 

[hanoverphist]

I had to do a hard reset 4 times in 1 year, getting it to actually sync with ActiveSync was a coin flip. And it was just butt slow. I loved the keyboard and I liked how I could install whatever I want. But it was a pretty pathetic OS.

thats weird, only time ive had to even soft reset is when im pushing the limits with 3rd party softs installs hapazardly. only reason ive hard reset my phone was to get it back to "original" to send it back to the manufacturer after i toasted the screen with sweat (118 deg, working in an underground pump room with no ac). for the most part, winmo 6.1 has been a solid experience for me. the samsung today addons have accommodated large fingers well, as well as replaced the oddly shaped windows keyboard that was intended to be used with a stylus only. active sync works every time, so mebbe it was an issue with your computer over an actual issue with active sync or the phone... i will give you the slowness depending on what phone youo had, but i havent had much slowness on mine for the most part. when it did show signs of sluggishness i usually traced it back to something i installed or changed. im pretty realistic, so i can really see where people are coming from when they bitch about winmo 6.X but youre way off base on yours. sounds like you were hoping it would fail and helped it along.

 

[QueBert]

thats weird, only time ive had to even soft reset is when im pushing the limits with 3rd party softs installs hapazardly. only reason ive hard reset my phone was to get it back to "original" to send it back to the manufacturer after i toasted the screen with sweat (118 deg, working in an underground pump room with no ac). for the most part, winmo 6.1 has been a solid experience for me. the samsung today addons have accommodated large fingers well, as well as replaced the oddly shaped windows keyboard that was intended to be used with a stylus only. active sync works every time, so mebbe it was an issue with your computer over an actual issue with active sync or the phone... i will give you the slowness depending on what phone youo had, but i havent had much slowness on mine for the most part. when it did show signs of sluggishness i usually traced it back to something i installed or changed. im pretty realistic, so i can really see where people are coming from when they bitch about winmo 6.X but youre way off base on yours. sounds like you were hoping it would fail and helped it along.

Why would I have paid $300 for a phone hoping it would fail? I had high hopes for it, it just didn't work out well for me. I guess it's a YMMV thing but I know my time with WM wasn't something I was fond of. I'm not the type to spend $300 on crap that doesn't work right for me. How is my bitching way off base? Having to do a hard reset when I install an app that turned my phone unusable will jade you towards something. Maybe it was as much Motorola's fault as it was MS. But I know my Motorola Q9c was a lot of hassle. My experience wasn't typical, but it wasn't exactly 1:1,000,000 either I was a member of a few WM forums and the problems I went thru did happen to a decent number of others.

 

[Deeko]

This is basically the new Sidekick, it was the result of Microsoft's acquisition of Danger, and the phone is made by Sharp (who also made the Sidekick).

I personally think it won't do well because its on Verizon. Sidekick sold well to young people....young people with less money. So putting it on an expensive carrier? Seems like its doomed to failure, unless they make special, cheap, Kin-specific plans.

 

[AstroManLuca]

That's true. On Verizon, a huge number of their phones fall under the "3G Smartphones" category, which requires a $30/mo data plan. If that's the case, there's really no reason to get a Kin over a similarly cheap true smartphone like a Palm Pre/Pixi or Droid Eris.

But even if Verizon does allow the Kin to go on their cheaper $10/mo data plan, that one only allows 25 MB of data. Don't know about you, but I'd NEVER put my kid on a data plan with such a low limit, especially with a phone that has a browser and significant picture/video sharing capabilities.

So again, this comes back to the problem of cell phone data plans not offering any levels other than "none/almost none" and "unlimited." There's no room for low-end smartphones. Of course, most people don't even care about their monthly bills and only look at how much the phone itself costs.

 

[Gooberlx2]

This is basically the new Sidekick, it was the result of Microsoft's acquisition of Danger, and the phone is made by Sharp (who also made the Sidekick).

Huh, my very first thought when I was reading about it was: "Gee, required cloud services, geared towards social networks, kids, etc... Kinda like that Tmobile phone MTV was always doing product placement for".

Now it all makes sense.

I also agree this should be on the cheaper carriers, or multiple carriers. Around here, all the parents I know put their kids on Cricket so they can abuse it as much as they want, without running up a bill (although those phones are all un-subsidized so...that probably wouldn't work well either).

 

[tatteredpotato]

Their own thing doesn't work, I have a WM6.1 phone and it was pretty terrible, even when it came out and was new. They should stick to OS's, they got Windows 7 almost right. The rest of their products I don't even want to touch. This will be a failure, but when you have a bazillion dollars like they do, I guess it's no big deal to release a product you know will fail before it's even out.

Er, at least the Entertainment and Devices Division seems to have a good track record for innovating and releasing successful products. They came up with the Xbox and Zune (and the Metro UI that is being used in WinMo7) and these are both successful and original designs. IMO WinMo 6.1 is not horrible, but at this point it's definitely dated and I don't even consider 6.5 an option since it's getting killed off soon.

Edit: I suppose Metro can be attributed to WMC, but IMO the Zune version is much more polished.

 

[EarthwormJim]

They look 'kin useless. They need to stop following apple and start doing their own 'kin thing again.

I don't see how these follow Apple. If anything these phones are as far away from Apple as a "smart" phone can get.

Unless you're being sarcastic.

 

[Narmer]

I had to do a hard reset 4 times in 1 year, getting it to actually sync with ActiveSync was a coin flip. And it was just butt slow. I loved the keyboard and I liked how I could install whatever I want. But it was a pretty pathetic OS.

I'm going to assume you either didn't know what you were doing or you're exaggerating your problems. I've had my WM5 phone through three operating systems (XP, Vista, and W7) and activesync has never given me a problem.

 

[rudeguy]

how about the packaging?

 

[QueBert]

I'm going to assume you either didn't know what you were doing or you're exaggerating your problems. I've had my WM5 phone through three operating systems (XP, Vista, and W7) and activesync has never given me a problem.

You got lucky, I've had 2 WM phones, one was less problematic than the other, but both gave me issues. As far as ActiveSync not working well for me, don't really see how that could have been me not knowing what I was doing. I installed the software, I hooked my phone up to a USB port. WM 5+ was really hit or miss, people either had zero problems with it, or they had a good deal of problems. With that said I've never had a problem with any other smartphone I've owned.

 

[tatteredpotato]

I don't see how these follow Apple. If anything these phones are as far away from Apple as a "smart" phone can get.

Unless you're being sarcastic.

I agree, they seem to be going for the sub-smart phone crowd (Teens) with this device. Of course it's requisite that it has some kind of supporting data plan. If the devices require a full data plan, there's little reason to choose these over a full-blown smart phone. On the other hand VZW's Media Phone plan only allocates 25Mb which isn't enough for a cloud phone like this.

Essentially they need carriers to agree to a $15-$20 Unlimited plan for these phones. It's been said that MS only has these devices sync with the social networking sites every 15 minutes to cut down on bandwidth usage, so it's possible they can reach some kind of deal with carriers.

 

[Bateluer]

I'm not really impressed with these phones. Honestly, Microsoft, that's the best you could come up with with billions of dollars worth of R&D?

 

[rudeguy]

They remind me of those Helio phones....

 

[tatteredpotato]

I feel these phones have been in development since before WinMo7 was too far along... I really don't see the Kin brand taking off, but then again I'm not a big Social Networking kind of guy.

 

[QueBert]

I feel these phones have been in development since before WinMo7 was too far along... I really don't see the Kin brand taking off, but then again I'm not a big Social Networking kind of guy.

It's possible, the Sidekick was wildly popular with the teens, most have an iPhone now but I could see this phone appealing to the teen crowd if it interfaces with Myspace & had good IM/TXT features. I don't see adults caring at all, but the 13-21 crowd has a ton of money to blow and this is exactly the kind of thing they'd blow it on.

 

[phillyTIM]

Kin look like GURLY-PHONES....muhahaahaaa! ;-)

 

[Deeko]

It's possible, the Sidekick was wildly popular with the teens, most have an iPhone now but I could see this phone appealing to the teen crowd if it interfaces with Myspace & had good IM/TXT features. I don't see adults caring at all, but the 13-21 crowd has a ton of money to blow and this is exactly the kind of thing they'd blow it on.

http://gizmodo.com/5515771/why-microsoft-is-trying-to-sell-a-smart-dumbphone

 

[Lumathix]

This is basically the new Sidekick, it was the result of Microsoft's acquisition of Danger, and the phone is made by Sharp (who also made the Sidekick).

I personally think it won't do well because its on Verizon. Sidekick sold well to young people....young people with less money. So putting it on an expensive carrier? Seems like its doomed to failure, unless they make special, cheap, Kin-specific plans.

Damn, something was bothering me about this design, and that's it. I had a sidekick years ago. It's not a fond memory. I agree, I think Verizon is not a good choice for these phones.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Damn, something was bothering me about this design, and that's it. I had a sidekick years ago. It's not a fond memory. I agree, I think Verizon is not a good choice for these phones.

There had to be some negotiating on the plan pricing between Verizon and Microsoft, otherwise why would this be a Verizon exclusive phone.

Since it uses the awful Zune web browser, there's no way this phone will see anywhere near the same internet usage as other phones.

This will fail if it costs the same per month as any actual smart phone.