With social networking sites becoming increasingly popular, handset makers are trying to deliver phones with special focus on such sites. The newest handset to join the league is Microsoft’s new Windows phone dubbed Kin. This phone has been designed in partnership with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Sharp Corporation.
KIN has been designed to merge phone, online and PC functionalities through unique experiences known as Loop, Spot and Studio. This Windows phone has been integrated with a fun, simple interface. The phone is dedicated to users and the moments that make up their life, rather than focusing on menus and icons.
Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft commented on the phone by saying that, “Working closely with our partners, we saw an opportunity to design a mobile experience just for this social generation – a phone that makes it easy to share your life moment to moment. We built Kin for people who live to be connected, share, express and relate to their friends and family. This social generation wants and needs more from their phone. Kin is the one place to get the stuff you care about to the people you care about most.”
The hardware of the phone has been designed in collaboration with Sharp, so as to bring around a dedicated social phone. Kin has been designed in two models, Kin One and Kin Two. The phones sport a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard. Kin Oneis slightly more compact as compared to Kin Two, which aides in one hand functionality. Two sports a larger screen and keyboard alongside greater memory and higher resolution camera. The One and Two have been integrated with 5MP and 8MP cameras, respectively, compatible in low light and come with image stabilizer and a bright LumiLED flash.
The homescreen of the phone, known as Kin Loop, is updated regularly and is always on to the social happenings in the user’s life. The social phone accommodates all notifications from Microsoft and other services like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace in one place. This singular view aides in better social connectivity. Moreover, users can select their favorite people and Kin automatically lays importance on their updates, messages, feeds and photos.
Another valuable feature of the phone is the Kin Spot. This allows users to share their stories in their social circle. This feature permits users to pay attention to people and other things important to them rather than focusing on which application to be used. Videos, photos, text messages, Web pages, location and status updates can be simply dragged to the Spot. At the Spot, users get various options on how they would like to share their data with the world.
The KIN Studio is the user’s online mode. Anything that is stored on the phone is available in the cloud from any web browser. Images and video files can be easily shared and viewed once they are out of the restrictions of the phone and available in an online visual timeline. Furthermore, Studio creates backup of all of the user’s data such as texts, call history, photos, videos and contacts. With the personalized journal feature, users can take a walk down memory lane anytime, anywhere. Also, users do not need to worry about memory space, as Studio allows them enough storage to store all the special moments.
Apparently, Kin will be the first phone that has the Zune experience inclusive of music, videos, FM radio and podcast playback attached with it. Users with a Zune Pass subscription can listen to millions of tracks from the Zune Marketplace or save a personal playlist. Among other features, there exists a rich browser with the ability to share pieces of the web, local and Web search by Bing, RSS Feed reader for information on other users and stories from the web.
Kin will be available exclusively from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. beginning this May as well as from Vodafone coming autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.