Microsoft announced the new KIN Windows Phones designed for young hip social-networkers, for the "ultimate social experience that blends the phone,
online services and the PC with new experiences called the
Loop, Spot and Studio."
KIN will be exclusively available from Verizon
Wireless in the U.S. beginning in May. This is the phone formerly referred to as Project Pink. KIN syncs with a cloud studio and has ZUNE music/video built-in.
KIN has social networking is built into the
fabric of the phone. The hardware designed by Sharp creates a new
kind of social phone. There are two models called KIN ONE and KIN TWO.
Both phones feature a touch screen and slide-out keyboard. ONE is small
and compact is a portrait slicer and TWO has a larger screen and keyboard, in addition to more
memory, a higher resolution camera, and the ability to record
high-definition video.
The 5 and 8 megapixel cameras in ONE and TWO,
respectively, are designed for use in low light with image stabilization
and a bright LumiLED flash.
The home screen of the
phone is called the KIN Loop, which is always up to date and always on,
showing all the things happening in someone's social world. KIN
automatically brings together feeds from leading Microsoft and
third-party services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter all in one
place, making it easier to stay connected. Customers can also select
their favorite people, and KIN will automatically prioritize their
status updates, messages, feeds and photos. Another unique feature, the
KIN Spot is a new way for people to share what's going on in their
world. It lets them focus first on the people and stuff they want to
share rather than the specific application they want to use. Videos,
photos, text messages, Web pages, location and status updates are shared
by simply dragging them to a single place on the phone called the Spot.
Once all the people and content are in the Spot to share, the consumer
can choose how to share, and start broadcasting.
KIN Studio is your phone online. Almost
everything
created on the phone is available in the cloud from any Web browser.
Photos and videos are freed from the confines of the phone and presented
in an online visual timeline so they are easy to view and share. The
KIN Studio automatically backs up texts, call history, photos, videos
and contacts, and populates a personalized digital journal so it's easy
to go back in time to relive a crazy weekend or recent birthday. And the
KIN Studio gives customers tons of storage to keep all those photos,
videos, contacts and texts so they'll never run out of space on their
phone and lose a memory.
KIN will be the first Windows
Phone to feature a Zune experience -- including music, video, FM radio
and podcast playback. With a Zune Pass subscription, customers using
Zune software on their PC can listen to millions of songs from Zune
Marketplace on their KIN while on the go, or load their personal
collection. KIN also has other features customers want in a phone
including a rich browser with the ability to share pieces of the Web,
local and Web search by Bing, and an RSS feed reader to pull down
information on people and stories from the Web.