In a live event today, Microsoft revealed the project referred to as the Microsoft Pink until now. It’s called the Kin and it represents the next generation of devices stemming from Microsoft’s acquisition of Danger. The Kin is a device which focuses on people deep in the social media world. Those of us who live on Facebook and Twitter and who have groups of friends that extend beyond just those we interact with in person.
There are actually 2 devices in play here. The Kin One and the Kin Two. Both devices are sliders with a camera, LED flash, and a full QWERTY keyboard. The Kin One is a small squarish device and the Kin Two is more of a standard sized slider phone with a higher quality camera (8 megapixels) and screen.
The phone has no support for third-party applications, but is well integrated into all the most popular social networking sites. The point is to keep you in tune with what’s going on with your friends online, separating your friends into 3 groups:
- Friends you interact with on a regular basis and in person. The people you hang out with.
- Friends that you probably haven’t seen in years, but still stay in touch with online. Like those people on Facebook you graduated high school with.
- Friends that you met online that you have probably never actually met, but you still share interests with.
The primary home screen of the device is where you stay in The Loop. The Loop refers to both the stream of information available on the Kin as well as the conversations and media that are constantly flowing through your network of friends.
In addition to keeping you in The Loop, the Kin helps you easily share things. A green dot is ever present on your screen and dropping items on this dot allows you to share them across your network. You compose your share by dragging things to the dot from The Loop, the web browser, your search results, and so on. Once you send the item to your friends, the Kin figures out what to send to whom. For instance, your Facebook friends may get a Facebook message with all the details and your standard phone contacts will get an MMS with the relevant attachments.
The Kin One comes with 4GB of internal storage, while the Kin Two offers 8GB. The great part of it is that this internal storage is almost made irrelevant based on the fact that all of your data is stored in the cloud. This is pretty much identical to how the Sidekick (created by Danger) has always worked. In addition to having all of your phone data available outside of the phone (yeah! no lock-in!) you can access your data via any web browser. There is even a timeline available so that you can scroll back in time and reminisce.
I can’t lie, this device looks very interesting. The Sidekick was probably my favorite phone ever and the only reason I got rid of it was it’s lack of 3rd party apps. Even though the Kin series offers Over The Air updates, the lack of apps might turn many off. On the other hand, it might be exactly what their target demographic is looking for. If you want to be the first one to comment on your friends’ updates, this is the device for you.
The device is exclusive to Verizon and you should be able to snag one in May.
first photo via Engadgenet