Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two - a new breed of social phones

Kin One and Kin Two are a duo of multimedia phones with a strong focus on social networking. Both phones use a customized Windows Phone 7 interface where online social interaction is central.

The new Kin phones are set to provide a "deeply social" experience on the same platform that will bring us the first Windows Phone 7 phones. In contrast to Windows Phone 7 phones, the whole user experience will be entirely personal revolving around social networking on the go. The homescreen of the KIN phones (called the Loop) is a never-ending story of the lives of your friends. Or as the UI design team puts it "the metaphor for KIN phones is a magazine".

Kin One, codenamed Turtle, is an ultra compact, almost pebble-like slider with a hardware QWERTY keyboard that's small enough for one-handed typing. It's got a 5 megapixel camera, 4GB of internal storage, a GPS receiver and a Zune media player. It has also got multi-touch (pinch) zooming.

Microsoft Kin One

Kin Two, codenamed Pure, is a side-slider with a full-size QWERTY keyboard. It tops the Kin One goodies with an 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording and a photo flash. There are 8 gigabytes of storage memory on board the Kin Two.

Microsoft Kin Two

Both the Kin One and Kin Two lack memory card slots. Instead both phones make use of Kin Studio - an online sync service that backups (and even shares) your phone's photos and videos, messages, call history, etc.

Kin One and Kin Two will be exclusively offered by Verizon in the US with imminent May release. Vodafone will sell the devices exclusively this autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

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