{"id":525043,"date":"2010-04-12T18:54:58","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=112433"},"modified":"2010-04-12T18:54:58","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:54:58","slug":"hands-on-first-impressions-of-microsoft%e2%80%99s-kin-phones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/525043","title":{"rendered":"Hands-on First Impressions of Microsoft\u2019s Kin Phones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Microsoft\u00a0today launched a line-up of mobile devices called Kin<\/a>. Built by Sharp and going on sale through Verizon Wireless starting next month, the phones are targeted at young people — mostly teenagers — and are the handiwork of members of the Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in February 2008 for $500 million.<\/a><\/p>\n

I attended the Kin launch largely because I was curious as to what Microsoft’s response to the Apple-Android assault on the smartphone market would look like. After all, it’s not like anyone will be able to buy a Microsoft-branded Windows Phone anytime soon. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was curious — the event was packed to the gills. So like everyone else there, I gave the first two models to be launched — the Kin One and Kin Two <\/a>– a try, only to find myself quickly overwhelmed by all the things taking place on the screen.<\/p>\n

But I’m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

\"\"Let me start by accentuating the positive<\/strong>: The two devices are extremely well built and are exceptionally fast, with touchscreens that are positively spritely compared to their Android-based rivals. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the company has done a great job of cobbling together solid hardware that’s chock-full of features. The Kin Two in particular felt nice and sturdy; its slide-out keyboard was comfortable and its overall look was as appealing as the Palm Pre. OK that last bit was a joke, but it does look very much like the Palm device.<\/p>\n

Marry that hardware to a superb 3G network like Verizon’s and you are in for a great experience, especially when accessing Internet-based services, whether they be photos, videos or contacts. Snapping photos or videos and loading them to the web using the Kin phones is dead simple.<\/p>\n

Another excellent feature of the Kin phones is their tight integration with Microsoft’s Zune Music Service. Accessing music through the service was a totally mind-blowing experience — fast, responsive and easy to use. Whether that’s due to Verizon’s network or some under-the-hood trickery, I don’t know, but in the future I will expect all music services to be as good as this one.<\/p>\n

\"\"Unfortunately all this goodness doesn’t add up to a great phone, because the user experience was cluttered and confusing. The opening screen, which is a grid divided into squares, is so busy it reminds me of Times Square on a Friday night.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s Kin can be divided into three components — the Loop, the Spot and the Studio. The Loop is essentially a social aggregation service that is very much like Motorola’s Blur except a tad more polished. It allows you to get updates from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.<\/p>\n

And as with the Moto Blur, it’s a good idea but one that causes visual dissonance — which is even more profound if you’ve ever experienced the picture-perfect serenity of an iPhone OS-based device. The lack of visual polish extends to the Spot, a sharing service that allows you to share \u00a0photos, texts and web pages with almost anyone by simply dragging them to a \u201cspot\u201d on your phone.<\/p>\n

Again, a great idea, but one that needs some spit and polish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Photo of Kin Studio By Microsoft<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The most stunning part of the package is the Kin Studio. I absolutely love this feature, which offers a visually delighful way to save everything you’ve created on the phone to the Internet and then access it from any web browser. Use it in concert with a Facebook account and suddenly you have a whole new way of managing information. If Microsoft is smart, it’ll turn this into a freestanding service. Think of this as Microsoft’s version of Apple’s MobileMe, albeit one that works with all devices, regardless of their operating environments.<\/p>\n

As you might have guessed by now, there’s a lot I like about the Kin line of phones and yet they left me feeling as satisfyied as I do after eating a quick Chinese meal at the food court. I found the overall experience to lack a certain coherence, and ironically I think the problem with the Kin line as it stands now can be\u00a0summed up by this bit from the Microsoft press release:<\/p>\n

With KIN, social networking is built into the fabric of the phone. KIN has a fun, simple interface, which is designed to help people publish the magazine of their life by making the people and stuff they love the focus rather than menus and icons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exactly — it’s trying to do too many things at once. And in the process, it’s defying what has become standard user behavior among young people: trying and buying applications. As AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui once told me: Apps are the new entertainment. From that perspective, Microsoft may have missed a step here, especially given its odds. Indeed, at least one analyst suggests that nearly 31 percent of\u00a0American teenagers want an iPhone <\/a>in “the next six months, up from 22% last fall and nearly double the 16% who wanted one a year ago.” From Fortune:<\/p>\n

“We believe that the teen demographic is a critical component of long-term growth in the digital music and mobile markets,” wrote Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “And Apple is taking its leading position in music and mobile markets.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well the good news is that Microsoft is at least is playing in the right market now.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft\u00a0today launched a line-up of mobile devices called Kin. Built by Sharp and going on sale through Verizon Wireless starting next month, the phones are targeted at young people — mostly teenagers — and are the handiwork of members of the Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in February 2008 for $500 million. I attended the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":674,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/674"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}