At a press event, Microsoft launched the new Kin phones; namely the Kin One and the Kin Two which are targeted towards teens who care more about social network such as Twitter, Facebook and less about everything else.
The phones have long been under development codenamed as the 'Project Pink' and share the same core as the Windows Phone 7 OS. However; the interesting bit is that these phones are not meant to be smartphones at all since all they do is share information from around social networks and there is no option to install apps at all.
The Kin One, which shares it's form factor with this mysterious Motorola phone, has a 2.4 inch capacitive display with 5 megapixel camera and 4 GB memory while the Kin Two has a 3.5 inch capacitive display with a 8 megapixel camera and 8 GB memory. Both the phones have Nvidia Tegra powered chipset, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G and a slide-out keyboard.
Interesting features from the OS, which is a variant of Windows Phone 7, include:
- The Loop: The Loop is the places where feeds from your favorite people appear and includes photos, social networking updates, and more.
- The Spot: Let's you simply drag and drop items onto a spot to share them with your friends and networks so you no longer have to take several steps to share things.
- The Kin Studio: The desktop part of the experience that is browser-based and gives you a visual of all the data synced wirelessly and automatically up to the Microsoft servers.
The Zune software on the PC can be used to sync music and other media with the Kin phones. The phones are headed to Verizon Wireless and as of now; no details on the pricing have been revealed yet.
[More at ZDnet]