“Project Pink” turns out to be Microsoft Kin!

For quite a few years now, after their purchase of Danger, Microsoft has been working on “Project Pink” a mobile offering that professed to be a game changer that will “navigate your social life”.  Last week, Microsoft finally revealed their new Kin range of phones based on Windows Phone 7 Series and Microsoft’s cloud services.

The reason they’ve included cloud services (where you can store your information on their computers via the Internet) is so that:

• Your phone’s data can be backed up regularly for easy recovery.
• You don’t need much storage space on the phone because your pictures, music and other data is stored on their computers / servers.

The Kin device is a joint venture between Microsoft, Sharp (who developed the hardware), Verizon Wireless and Vodaphone (mobile networks offering the Kin soon).  As yet, there is no mention of whether Vodacom will be bringing the Kin into South Africa – it is very possible they’ll skip this one and wait for Windows Mobile 7 series phones. I’ll keep you posted.

Windows Kin phones

Kin One: If you love taking pictures to share on the web, the Kin One is for you. It has a 5MP camera with flash, touch screen and full QWERTY slide out keyboard – for fast texting, email and instant messaging.  The unusual design takes some getting used to but the screen size seems great.

Microsoft Kin One

Kin Two: This little device features an 8MP camera and ability to record 720p video – cool! It also has more memory capacity than its little brother.

Microsoft Kin Two

The Kin operating system: based on Windows Mobile 7 Series, but a completely separate platform, the Kin OS has some really great features:

KIN Spot: This is a “spot” on the phone’s screen that lets you drag and drop all sorts of things that you can instantly share with all your friends via SMS, MMS or email.  If you take a great photo or record a cute video, simply drag and drop it onto the “spot” and you can share it immediately. Very convenient!

KIN Loop: The home screen of the Kin phone is called the KIN Loop.  It is like a little dashboard showing social information that you’d like to see; such as friend’s status updates, news feeds, pictures, friends’ twitter tweets and much more.  It is completely customisable so that you can create the view you’d like to see.

KIN Studio: Kin studio connects to Microsoft’s cloud service and allows your phone to communicate with your secure storage on the Microsoft servers.  Anything you create or capture on the KIN can be saved within this area and you can access it via the Internet.

Music: Microsoft Zune was a very successful music service and platform, which unfortunately didn’t seem to gain much market share. But the best of Zune is now available on the Kin via the Zune software that you can install on your PC/Laptop. Similar to iTunes for iPhone, this software allows you to manage your music and other media.

If you’re looking for a fun, social phone that helps you keep in touch with your friends, this seems to be a great option - if it comes in at a decent price.  The screen size will also offer a good mobile internet experience, but I would not recommend it for serious business use.

In my humble opinion, these look like great entry-level, fun devices but the competition is tough and I think that this is a case of Microsoft coming to market a little too late. Let’s hope Windows Mobile 7 Series blows our socks off!

READERS: Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about these devices?