Today in TechMicrosoft’s Kin phones are revived—sort of—by Verizon
Yep, the rumors were true. After flopping over the summer, Microsoft's failed Kin messaging sliders are back on sale on Verizon Wireless—although in the interest of lower data fees, they no longer do everything they used to.
Available now—don't everyone flood Verizon's website all at once—the Kin One and Two (or, to be more precise, the "ONEm" and "TWOm") are selling for $120 and $220, respectively, or $20 and $50 with two-year contracts.
The Kin One comes with a 5-megapixel camera and 4GB of onboard storage, while the larger, pricier Kin Two has an 8MP camera and 8GB of storage. Both phones boast slide-out QWERTY keyboards, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Launched with great fanfare back in May, the two Kins represented Microsoft's stab at young (and mobile) social networkers. Both handsets featured something called the Kin Loop: a steady stream of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live updates.
At the bottom of the screen was the Kin Spot, a little icon upon which you could drag snapshots, URLs and anything else you wanted to share with your fellow social networkers. And the Kin Studio was a private webpage that organized all your daily Kin activity—phone calls, text messages, status updates, everything—into a minute-to-minute timeline.
That's all gone now. Instead, Kin ONEm and TWOm owners who want to use Facebook or Twitter will have to do so over the standard Kin browser.
It's a drag—especially given that the Kin Loop and Studio were the best things about the otherwise poorly reviewed handsets—but at least users will no longer be forced to fork over $30 a month in data fees. Now your options include $10 a month for 25MB of data, or $1.99 per MB on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The possibility of the Kins returning to Verizon cropped up last week after PPCGeeks posted a leaked carrier road map listing the two handsets, which had been reclassified as "feature" phones rather than full-fledged smartphones.
The two Kin sliders had barely been on sale for two months when Verizon slashed prices on the phones. Shortly afterward, Microsoft unceremoniously announced that it would cease development on the handsets.
Reviewers of the Kins weren't that kind either (myself included), saying that the phones were sluggish, too pricey considering the features, and lacked essentials like a microSD slot, a mapping app or an app store of any kind.
In any case, it looks like Verizon is hoping to clear its inventory of unsold Kins by repositioning them as cheaper "feature" phones, but I'd expected that at least the lower-end Kin One would be free with a two-year contract. Instead, it's $20 with a two-year commitment, while the Kin Two is $50—or just as much as the Two was selling for after Verizon chopped its original $99 price tag. Oh well.
So, anyone willing to give the Kin another try?
— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.
