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?
