No Courier today folks... Microsoft launches Kin "It's nice to meet you"

Microsoft is in the middle of announcing it's new line of 'Social Generation phones' Kin one and Kin two. You can view the webcast here  or visit the live website http://kin.com/

So far the OS focus seems to be completely based around consolidating and organising peoples extensive social networking  'friends' list.
This follows a trend from the likes of Motorola, HTC and Palm with a focus around consolidated contact info with easy sharing.

Kin will also have a cloud backup service (akin to Sidekick, but hopefully more reliable) which has a really cool timeline feature that lets you view what texts you received, what pics you took , what calls you made etc and on which date.

Microsoft claim the camera is excellent in low light due to the 5MP and 8MP sensor's with powerful LED flash, to avoid taking multiple devices out with you. Which ever way you dress it up the sensor in that thing is gonna be tiny and no match for a proper camera.

It seems nice enough so far and can really see this being a successful gimmicky trend for annoying teenagers, but seems more featurephone than smartphone, kinda like a pager on Acid.

With no immediate ties to Windows Phone 7, it's not yet clear if there will be apps available or whether they will be cross-compatible with WP7 or not.  Will this niche target become a major new market? Personally with the focus on smartphones and apps I'm surprised to be seeing Microsoft make this move, Hiptop/Sidekick made sense in the early 2000's as there were no consumer-friendly smartphones available, but now there is huge choice of fully featured smartphones at relatively cheap cost.
I guess we will find out in May when it launches on Verizon and in Autumn on Vodaphone.

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