TheWindowsPhone

Some early reviews are in on Microsoft’s new feature phones, the Kin One and Kin Two, and they’re not good! PhoneScoop and Engadget have put up scathing reviews of the Kin Phones, saying the “execution falls far, far short of what others have been able to accomplish” and that “Kin is one side of the family that needs to be disowned… quickly.

Both reviews talk about mediocre hardware – which was pretty expected – and less-than-satisfactory UI experiences. The PhoneScoop review was less harsh than the Engadget review:

“While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks — and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented — but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone. We were told by the devices on more than one occasion that we needed to restart (while performing basic tasks), and often it would just throw us a blank screen while we waited for the device to come back from whatever tragic internal situation was occurring. It would be wonderful to say more good about the phone’s UI — but we just can’t.”

One positive thing that seems to come out of these Kin reviews is the Kin Studio, which syncs your phone activities (texts, calls, emails, pictures, videos, RSS, contacts, etc) with your online account. I previously speculated that this could be the future of MyPhone, but we’ll have to wait and see I guess.

One thing that comes across in both reviews and another piece over at WindowsPhoneThoughts is that Microsoft and Verizon have missed the mark on pricing. The Kin One and Kin Two are designed to be the new low-end feature phones and should have been free and $50, respectively. Not only are the devices $49 and $99 (after rebates), but Verizon is insisting on a minimum voice plan of $39.99 per month and both phones require a smartphone data plan at $29.99 per month – that’s $70 per month for a dumb phone!

Sorry, Microsoft, this isn’t looking good!

If you’re a Verizon customer rocking a Samsung Omnia, you might be interested to know that Samsung has released a little update just for you folks! Not 100% sure what’s inside, besides “numerous software additions/enhancements/corrections”. Software corrections – nice euphemism!

If you’re one of the lucky, you can download the Verizon Samsung Omnia update here.

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Microsoft insists on releasing dumb phone without apps? We were thinking and thinking and the only explanation is: extreme incompetence.

Edward from MSMobiles.recently posted about a survey showing teens want iPhones and extrapolated that this means they won’t want the app-less Kin devices. As I posted earlier, my teenage daughter was gushing over the Kin One as I was watching some videos on it yesterday – the phone is cool and focuses on the features that are important to her (taking pictures of herself and putting them up on facebook mainly).

The whole world is app-happy these days, but I really like Microsoft’s push away from the app and towards the experience-centric model that we see in Windows Phone 7. I may sound like an Apple fanboy here, but do we really care which app we’re using to do all the basic functions we expect from a smartphone? When I take a picture on the skihill, do I want to fiddle around with different apps to get that pic to my Facebook account, up to Twitter, then to MMS it to my brother to rub it in? No – I want to click a button and have it done quickly and easily… just like my kid wants.

I do want to be able to install new apps to extend the functionality of my device, but I does my teenage daughter? Not really. I watch her data usage on her BlackBerry like a hawk, and she only uses a few megs/month – all Facebook and social network updates. These new Kin devices are targeted at her and her contemporaries… and I think Microsoft has aimed just right.

Once Again the guys at PocketNow are making me jealous, as they nab an ex-employee/current-Softie to give them a walk-through of the new Kin One and Kin Two devices announced by Microsoft.

The video above is a walk-through of the Kin One and some of the cool new Kin features, like the Kin Loop and the Kin Spot, the Zune software and the ZunePass, and the very connected 5 megapixel camera.

This next video is a nice tour of the Kin Two, which is the bigger, “bolder” Kin that features an 8 megapixel, HD-video capable camera and 8 gigs of storage (compared to 4 on the Kin One).

The charming young lady explains how the Kin Spot is “THE new way to share”, and how it skips the apps and focuses directly on the services and networks. This video includes a full demo of how the camera works and stores everything in the cloud, with a nice demo of the Kin Studio, too.

These Kin phones look terrific. I showed them to my 15-year-old daughter and she hasn’t stopped bugging me: “when can I upgrade!?” Luckily/sadly, while Verizon and Vodafone customers can expect these devices to drop next month, no word yet on who will carry them in Canada.

I hope at the very Microsoft upgrades MyPhone to work more like the Kin Studio – that’s awesome!

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Microsoft just announced the long awaited Project Pink details – now to be known as Kin. Using the themes of “Kindred Spirits”, two phones (imaginatively called the Kin 1 and the Kin2) feature a new UI on some hip-looking smartphones.

Built by Sharp, the two new Kin 1 and Kin 2 phones are heavy on the cameras! Microsoft has placed a huge emphasis on the quality of the cameras, “especially in dim light”, on the Kin 1 and Kin 2, which feature a 5 and 8 megapixel camera respectively. The Kin 2 even shoots 720p video.

Still on the multimedia side, the Kin phones will both ship with Zune app, including the Zune Service.

The Kin Loop

Kin takes the ‘hub’ idea of Windows Phone 7 and brings it to a lower-end, ‘amplified, not simplified’ OS. The Kin Loop is a customizable contact screen that pulls in the latest social networking feeds from all your friends. The latest Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and, of course, Windows Live updates will be pulled right onto the phone.

The Kin Spot

The Kin Spot is a cool feature that allows users to drag items from pretty much any screen onto “the spot” – pics, videos, web pges, search results, even contacts, then send them, txt them, upload them or otherwise begin a conversation with those items Everything is also geo-tagged, so you can pull up your pics on a Bing map. Cool ideas.

Kin Studio

Microsof’t’s MyPhone on steroids, the Kin phones automatically store everything you do – pictures, videos and communications – and displays them to you on a "timeline”. Almost creepy, but with the way our phones are integrated into our lives these days I suppose it makes sense.

Applications

The Kin 1 and Kin 2 also feature some essential and solid looking apps, namely a handy global search, a decent looking web browser that includes pinch-and-zoom.

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Microsoft has teamed up with Verizon and Vodafone for distribution and – just before signing off with the “the new Kin: the phone experience that connects what you love to the people you love – Microsoft said the phones would appear on shelves in May.

It would be easy to assume that the Kin is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction designed to stop the hemorrhaging while they get Windows Phone 7 to market. After all, Apple has just announced their iPhone OS4 and and dropped the iPad, and Android is grabbing market share quickly.

But let’s not forget that Project Pink has been around for years now, so this is not a reactionary move. Microsoft has made no secret of their plans to keep Windows Mobile 6.5x devices around under the “Classic” brand, so perhaps these Kin devices will stick around in the long run be lower-functioning family of devices.

Regardless of the future of the devices, the Kin Studio is not a product that was developed on the side. I firmly believe we’ll see this incorporated into the MyPhone experience and integrated tightly into both the Zune and Windows Phone 7 devices, plus I’m sure your XBox world.

To me, the most revolutionary thing about what I’ve seen of Windows Phone 7 is the reorganization of data around the hub idea, and that seems to be the biggest feature of these new Kin phones (in form of the Kin Loop). In that sense, I’m really eager to see how the market receives the Kin.

We’ll surely be digesting this announcement for a while… any thoughts from you guys though?

After what must be years of rumors, Mashable is reporting that Microsoft is set to launch their “Project Pink” social networking phones tomorrow during a live webcast.

With the slogans “We’re For Sharing” and “It’s Time to Share” in bold across some leaked promotional material, two new social networking-oriented phones are going to verizon: the Turtle and the Pure, pictured below.

These two devices reflect a more hands-on approach to handset design for Microsoft. The specs for Project Pink phones have been floating around for some time and were at one point rumored to be the Windows 7 Chassis.

It turns out Project Pink is the result of Microsoft working closely with Sharp to design these handsets specifically geared towards social networking.

Beyond the heavy social networking integration (have to wait for tomorrow for more details), its thought that MS will also announce some new online services tailored to the Pink line.

Head back over to the Microsoft site April 12th at 10am PT to see the webcast launch of the new Microsoft Project Pink phones!

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Microsoft officially launched Windows Phone 7 Series (previously referred to as Windows Mobile 7, Windows Phone 7, or even Photon) on Monday, dropping the gauntlet on what will shape up to be a mighty mobile battle come Christmas.

A whole new OS

Windows Phone 7 Series Phones, as the new devices will be officially known (yikes), will be a complete departure from the Windows Mobile devices we are all familiar with and feature a brand-new, possibly revolutionary UI. The Start menu? Gone. Touch elements designed for six-year-old fingers? Gone. In fact, Microsoft’s new OS is aiming to change the mobile phone paradigm by shifting away from an app-centric model to an experience or task-based system that groups your personal data, social networking streams, location-based services, and media sources into what Microsoft calls ‘hubs’ (more later)

Reflecting their determination to re-define the relationship between end-user and their phone, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the Barcelona 2010 Mobile World Congress:

“In a crowded market, filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience. Windows Phone 7 marks a turning point toward phones that truly relfect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences.”

Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone, said it was time to stop thinking about mobile phones like PCs:

“A phone is not a PC, it’s a smaller, more intimate device,” he said. “Too many phones are made to look like PCs. We wanted to come up with a user design that was different, that moved beyond the metaphor of the PC.”

Live Tiles

This ain’t your daddy’s Windows Phone. Microsoft has taken advantage of the fact that it is so late with this product to properly think out how people use their mobile devices. They have no doubt heard for years now about how un-finger-friendly Windows Mobile is and how counter-intuitive it can seem compared to its competition. They’ve seen people complain about icon overload and the app-to-app routine on the iPhone (one app for Facebook, one app for twittering, one app for YouTube, etc); The result? Live Tiles.

The new home screen on WP7 devices will consist of several vertically-scrollable live tiles. The main screen shows 5 live tiles: Internet Explorer, Phone, Text, People. Each of these boxes is “live” and auto-updates with real-time information from all of your various info sources. So when your friend updates his Facebook page, that update shows on the Friends tile. If you miss a phone call, the Phone tile updates to show the number of missed calls, and your most recent photos fade in and out in the Pictures tile.

Hubs

Clicking on any of these main live tiles will bring up the corresponding Hub. There are a bunch of default hubs that will ship with WP7: People, Games, Xbox Live, Pictures, Music & Video (with support for more than just Zune accounts), Zune, Office (with support for multiple exchange accounts), and of course the Marketplace. These hubs pull in data from all of your various sources and present it in a task-oriented manner, rather than using a separate app for each service you use.

For example, the above pic shows the People hub. The first screen you will see when you click on the People tile is the ‘Recent’ screen. Scrolling right will give you all of your peeps, scrolling right again will show you the What’s New tab, which lists all of your friends’ most recent social media updates,

Similarly, when you tap on the Music and Video tile, up pops the Zune menu. Scrolling to the right brings up your History, continuing to scroll brings up the “What’s New” tab, and then Apps that are music or video related. Hubs create an easy way to browse all of your data – both on-device and online – by topic or experience. Very cool.

X-Box and Zune Integration

While Microsoft’s mobile lately may have missed the mark, they have had remarkable success with their X-Box and Zune line. The X-Box model has been a decade in the making and Microsoft has earned a very respectable share of a competitive market – something it needs to do with WP7. The Zune HD was released last year to terrific reviews and great critical, if not commercial, success.

Microsoft is finally taking advantage of these successful platforms and fully integrating X-Box Live and Zune with Windows Phone 7 Series devices. Mobile gaming might be limited initially, but expect this to be a major component and battle ground in the coming year or two, and Microsoft (for once) has a clear advantage over rivals like Palm and Apple here.

As for Zune integration, you can almost thank the Zune for the new UI. Internally at Microsoft, the UI for the Zune HD was referred to as Metro; the same name they use to discuss the Windows Phone 7 Series interface. Beyond that, expect to see complete integration with the Zune service and any Zunes you might have lying around.

Manufacturers and Carriers

Just as with Windows Mobile, Microsoft has lined up a top-notch list of manufactures who are eager to start putting out Windows Phone 7 Series devices. The list includes longtime Windows Mobile supporters HTC, LG, Samsung and Toshiba, as well as Garmin-Asus, on-the-fence Sony Ericsson, and even Dell.

Unlike with Windows Mobile, however, and this is absolutely critical, Microsoft has imposed a Chassis requirement for all WP7 devices. This means that all WP7 phones will need have a minimum hardware spec that – so far – includes several mandatory hardware buttons (home, search and back), CPU and screen size/resolution requirements, plus an accelerometer, GPS, camera and other goodies.

This Chassis system should help maintain a good user experience and avoid manufacturers putting out shoddy hardware that gives Windows Phone 7 devices a bad rap.

Carriers will include all of the Big Four US carriers: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon – as well as Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SFR, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telstra, and Vodafone. Rogers and Telus haven’t made any comment yet.

WP7: Do or Die for Microsoft

By most accounts, it’s do or die time for Microsoft. For whatever reason, most likely because they simply underestimated the growth of the smartphone/mobile market, Microsoft hasn’t taken the mobile space very seriously for the past four or five years… despite being one of the first out of the gate.

By the time the first Windows Phone 7 Series device hits the market, we’ll be looking at a new iPhone, a new version of Google’s Android, and an updated webOS from Palm… very serious competition for Windows Phones. If Microsoft blunders, they might just miss the last train out of the desktop station.

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This nice long video from ai.rs shows Samsung’s Omnia II running Windows Mobile 6.5. Even though the Omnia II launched on Verizon with Windows Mobile 6.1, the Omnia II is in line for an upgrade. This video shows the Omnia II running Windows Mobile 6.5 and TouchWiz, Samsung’s UI replacement. TouchWiz appears to be quite expansive, with customized Windows UI screens right down to the little settings windows.

Anyone hear whether Verizon is offering an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 for current Samsung Omnia II users?

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The good guys over at PocketNow have posted a full review of the new HTC Imagio Windows Phone, available from Verizon. Calling it “the best Windows Phone released for the North American Market” so far, PocketNow really likes this new, Windows Mobile 6.5 device that features the new MediaFLO Qualcomm chip for mobile TV and a handy kickstand for easy viewing.

Watch the vid and leave your thoughts!

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I’ve been all Imagio all day long, so why stop now? I just came across this video posted by Pocketnow that gives a walk-through of the HTC Imagio’s hardware. Give it a look, and if you’d like more check out the HTC Imagio software tour I posted earlier.