Microsoft has released two new phones with Verizon; the Kin One and Kin Two. They’re social phones, aimed squarely at the uploading, messaging, social generation.
Kin One is a compact-sized slider, easily held in one hand. The keys are a little small for my fingers, but I’m not the best texter in town. A 2.6 inch touch screen can be tapped, double-tapped, swiped, and is very responsive. It boasts a 5-megapixel camera that geotags each photo and video and 4 GB of storage for all your pix and music.
The Kin Two is a more traditional slider form factor, with a 3.4-inch touch screen and 8 gigabytes of storage, as well as an 8-megapixel camera.
Both phones have built-in Zune music players, an FM Radio and built-in connections to the things teens love to do most; Facebook and MySpace. It does have Twitter as well, though it’s not easy to use all it’s features and I’m not sure how much teens tweet, based solely on the unscientific data gathered by watching the tech habits of my son and his friends.
What it does have is the Loop, the Spot and the Studio, and that’s really what makes the phone the social animal that it is. The Loop is the continuous feed of all the social-networking updates and favorite RSS feeds, kind of like the Facebook NewsFeed.
The Spot is a green dot on the bottom of the screen that you drag items to when you want to share them. As you browse your phone, you can tap on an item; a web page or a picture, and place it in the Spot. Later on, upload it to Facebook, or even drag a contact into it so the Spot knows who to send it to. It does seem easier than opening 3 different applications.
The Studio is a big social networking site that you access on your computer. Basically, everything you do on your phone, is backed up at the Studio. Every picture, video, email, you can find it there online. Not sure where you took that picture? Tap it and a map opens up to let you know where you were. This is interesting because, on the one hand, its great if you lose your phone. Everything is backed up, not just your contacts. And we all know that no one remembers to save pictures from their mobile phones, especially teens.
I’m just not convinced teens spend that much time on their laptops. Again, using my son as an example, if he’s online, he’s on ESPN, not perusing what he has stored on his phone. And if he wants music on his phone, I think he’ll want to download it over the air, not go online to ZunePass to get it. Trust me, kids are very adept at scrolling through 2,000 previous texts to find the one they need. Or they just don’t need it that badly. I think the Studio angle will appeal to the older generation much more than it will the “upload generation.”
Then there are the apps. There are no apps. No gaming. A great way to keep your kid from spending money on iTunes but teens do need to chill once in a while. Maybe they don’t want to be on Facebook all the time, or just want to play a quick game of Madden or Tetris before a class. Not happening here. I think for many, that might be a deal-breaker.
The Kin One will sell for $49.99 after a $100 rebate and a two-year service contract, the Kin Two will cost $99.99. Not too bad, but add a monthly $29.99 data plan onto the cost of your calling plan and that starts to get costly for a phone for a teenager. Parents may wonder if the price of being so social is worth it.
Both phones go on sale May 13.
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