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Apr. 14, 2010

Microsoft wants to grab a piece of the social smartphone market through its latest joint-venture with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Sharp.

Microsoft will soon be lauching a new Windows Phone designed specifically for the younger social networking segment of the wireless industry.

The software giant says KIN will be exclusively available from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. beginning next month, and from Vodafone sometime in September in Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

There were no immediate details on pricing, and an email sent to Microsoft was left unsanswered before publishing this report.

The new KIN services combine the smartphone, Internet services and the personal computer with the new features called the Loop, Spot and Studio.

Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices Division at Microsoft says "we built KIN for people who live to be connected, share, express and relate to their friends and family. This new social generation wants and needs more from their smartphone. KIN is the one place to get the content you care about to the people you care the most."

Another new feature, the KIN Spot allows users to focus on the people they want to share rather than the specific app they want to use. Videos, photos, text messages, Web pages, GPS location and status updates are shared by dragging them to a single place on the phone called the Spot.

Once all the people and content are in the 'Spot' to share, the user can choose how to share, and simply start broadcasting right then and there.

The home screen of the smartphone is called the KIN Loop, which aggregates all of a user's social networks in real time. KIN automatically brings together feeds from Microsoft and third-party services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Wireless users can also select their favorite people, and KIN will automatically prioritize their status updates, messages, feeds and photos.

KIN Studio allows offline access to content. Microsoft says that everything created on the phone is available in the cloud from any Web browser. Photos and videos are presented in an online visual timeline so that they can be viewed and shared.

The KIN Studio automatically backs up texts, call history, photos, videos and contacts, and populates a personalized digital journal.

It will also feature a Zune experience, which includes music, video, FM radio and podcast playback. With a Zune Pass subscription, customers using Zune software on their PC can listen to songs from Zune Marketplace on their KIN while on the go, or load their personal collection.

Accompanying the new KIN services are KIN 1 and KIN 2, two devices that Microsoft is billing as "a new kind of social smartphone."

Both phones feature a touch screen and slide-out keyboard.

Overall, KIN 1 is small and compact, and KIN 2 has a larger screen and keyboard, in addition to more memory, a higher resolution camera, and the ability to record high-definition video.

The KIN 1 and 2 boast 5 and 8-megapixel cameras respectively.

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Source: Microsoft.