Microsoft Gets Social With Kin One & Two

12th April 2010 - Microsoft is getting social with the Kin One and Two, two new phones announced today for the Verizon network. The two new phones are focussed at social teens who want cheap access to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Both phones will be available in May, but no pricing details have been released.

The Kin One is the smaller (and probably cheaper) of the two phones, with a 320 by 240m pixel front screen and a slide-out miniature QWERTY keyboard. A 5 megapixel camera is built into the back of the camera that can also capture standard definition video. 4GB of of RAM is available for music and video storage, and the media player ties in with Microsoft's own Zune Pass service, with support for streaming music over 3G or WiFi connections.

The Kin Two is larger, with a bigger screen (with a resolution of 480 by 320), 8 megapixel camera, 8GB of RAM and  stereo speakers. The QWERTY keyboard is also a slide-out model, but is larger than the Kin One. The camera can also capture 720p HD video.

Both phones run a variant of Microsofts Windows Phone 7 software that brings together social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, with updates appearing on the home screen. Like the more fully featured Windows 7 Phone, information is held in a number of tiles that the user can slide between with a touch. All of the contacts   on the device is stored online as well, and anything on the phone can be shared by dragging it to The Spot, the green dot in the middle center of the screen. This automatically synchs the data to the social network services, so you can upload a photo to Facebook and MySpace by simply dragging it onto The Spot.

Both of the new phones are manfactured by Sharp, and will be available on Verizon in May. Microsoft has not released any details on pricing yet. More details are available on the Kin Web site.