The main appeal of the Kin One and Kin Two phones is their integration of social media. If you want to share your life with everyone in the world, the Kin phones are good for that.
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Kin phones are a nice experience, but not as nice as an iPhone in a lot of ways. The Kin, for instance, features a total of 12 apps. There’s something like 180,000 available for the iPhone. You will, at some point, be able to download apps over the air to the Kin phones.
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If any company has shown a willingness to slog through the marshes, gaining users little by little, it’s Microsoft. It has done well with the Xbox 360 video game console, selling 40 million units and surpassing Sony’s PlayStation 3 to take second place behind Nintendo. But its Zune media player has been a poor performer against Apple’s iPod.
Microsoft is starting out with a price that is realistic for teens and young people. The smaller Kin One is $49 after a $100 rebate if you sign up for a two-year contract. And the Kin Two is $99 with the same kind of deal. On May 13, the phones will be available in Verizon Wireless stores. The Kin One is pudgy, the Kin Two is tall. Verizon Wireless talk plans start at $39.99 a month and unlimited data plans are $29.99 a month.
The phone set-up process is easy. Upon charging and turning it on, you see a “Nice to meet you” message. Then you enter your name and start setting up your social connections. You can type in a Windows ID if you have a Hotmail or MSN account. Then you can enter the logins and passwords for your Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and email accounts. The phone then automatically pulls in your contacts and matches them with pictures, much like the Palm Pre does.
Each of the phones has a full slide-out QWERTY physical keyboard. The Kin One has 4 gigabytes of internal memory, while the Kin Two has 8 gigabytes. The Kin One comes with a 5-megapixel camera and the Kin Two has an 8-megapixel camera and a high-definition video camera. Both come with a zoom feature that you use by pressing the volume buttons. They both have a good LumiLED flash for the camera as well.
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Kin phones also incorporate Zune music, video, FM radio and podcast playback. With a Zune Pass subscription and Zune software on a PC, you can buy and listen to millions of songs from the Zune Marketplace.
You can share almost anything with a friend by dragging it into the Kin Spot, which is a dot on the screen that will automatically pull up an interface for sharing when you drag a photo into it. You can share a photo with people on your favorites list in a matter of seconds.
These phones are aimed at tweens and teens — hence, the keyboards for sending text messages. I picked one up today and checked it out. My teenager immediately started quizzing me about it when I brought it home. There’s nothing particularly stylish about these phones, which Microsoft executive Robbie Bach described as “couture software” when he announced them a short while ago.
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Online, you can use a more sophisticated interface known as the Kin Studio. You can set it up so that you can see photos, which are organized chronologically and viewable on maps. You can view almost everything on your phone and make sure it is backed up to a private, password-protected web site. Storage is virtually unlimited.
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