Kin One and Kin Two, Microsoft’s Latest Venture

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I told you about Microsoft’s event that was happening today which they called ” Time to Share ” and we have the news for you. Microsoft’s “Project Pink” has been rumoured for quite some time now and we were all expecting Microsoft to release mobile phones of some sort, and that’s just what we got.

The Kin One and Kin Two are Microsoft’s latest venture into the smartphone world.

I’ll let you figure out who these devices are aimed at, firstly the name ” Kin “, secondly Microsoft and Verizon announced these in a nightclub and thirdly, these phones have a dedicated share function and come with every social networking feature you could think of.

Yup you guessed it, as Microsoft’s Robbie Bach said, the target demographic is men and women between 15 and 30. These phones are for people who feel obliged to let us know every single movement they make during they day, update their Facebook status religiously and tweet whenever they can. The “lifecasters” as Microsoft call them.

The Kin One is a roundy looking device, sort of like the Palm Pre, just more…well rounded. It has a slide out QWERTY keyboard and has a QVGA display, 4GB of internal storage, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, WiFi and Bluetooth.

The Kin Two has a rather more traditional look to it, with its slide out QWERTY Keyboard, better HVGA display, with 8GB of storage, an 8 Megapixel camera and apart from that it’s pretty much the same as the Kin One.

While you can get social network features on many phones, on the Kin it’s different, it’s practically built around social networking. So much that sharing has it’s very own dedicated green button and the whole Kin experience is based around social networking.

Sharp are the manufacturers and Verizon will be the carrier of these devices in the US and are expected to land next month, however no date has been announced, either has pricing. Vodafone have signed up to be the carrier in Europe and are expecting a launch in the Fall.

There’s no app store to be found on either device, but Microsoft and Verizon can both push out updates over the air so they can add more add ons if they so wish. Microsoft aren’t trying to compete with the iPhone here, they are leaving that to Windows Phone 7.

They bothhave the Zune service built into them. This means the phones can play Zune video and music that is loaded onto the device from a PC, and Kin owners can also stream music over the air while they’re on the go.

The browser has also had a facelift and is similar to that found on the Zune HD with support for Pinch to Zoom and search for local and web services is also built in with it’s own dedicated search button.

So that’s it basically, Microsoft’s latest entry into the smartphone market,

What do you think?

Let us know in the comments

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