Verizon Freezes Microsoft Kin Sales; Returns Remaining Stock

If you are still for some reason harboring a desire for a Microsoft KIN, you might want to act fast. According to sources speaking to WMExperts, Verizon is freezing sales and sending back all remaining stock, which they have started doing on July 18th. Having axed the feature-phone project - targeted at a "Generation Upload" teen market that didn't seem particularly inclined to either give up their regular "adult" smartphones. It looks like Microsoft is now gathering up the unwanted leftover products.

If you still see the KIN being something you would like to use or have a soft spot for the dinky form-factor of the KIN One - then you should probably head down to your nearest Verizon store first thing and catch them before the workers get busy with the packing tape. Checking Verizon's own site shows the listings for the two handsets as being "present" but clicking on them prompts that neither is "available at this time," so you may or may not be able to catch it in time.

Microsoft Kin Phones Will Eventually Get Apps

Microsoft had told us that the Kin and Windows Phone 7 platforms would grow closer and under the pressure for the Kin’s lack of features, they have said it again. Microsoft’s phone strategy is weird. Before the Kin shipped, Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman hinted to us about Kin and Windows Phone 7’s intertwining futures:

He wouldn't confirm anything, but did say that a few years from now, we shouldn't be surprised to see a point where the two platforms are more interrelated. That may sound like a typical Microsoft "mañana, mañana" promise, but given the rate at which Microsoft cooked up both Windows Phone 7 and Kin, adjustments to either roadmap probably wouldn't be that difficult.

It all sounded vague and less like a promise about the next generation of products than a hope for the generation after that. Today, in an interview with ComputerWorld, after the Kin was pummeled for its lack of apps, maps, and Xbox integration despite its highly monthly price- Microsoft gets more specific:

Over the longer term, we'll be merging [Kin and Windows Phone 7] platforms and having downloadable apps.

So, the Kin will be getting apps, but it still sounds like the Kin that you can buy now may never have apps. He seems to be talking about the “merged” Kin, or next-generation Kin, or a Kin that depends on a software update that is years down the road.

Microsoft and Verizon go on to defend the Kin’s smartphone data pricing, stating that the online Studio feature will prove its worth to the consumers , but this bizarre messaging combined with scathing early reviews is going to start to make people wonder whether the Kin was a mistake.

Microsoft’s Kin One and Two Announced: Social Media Friendly Phones

Earlier today, Microsoft Pink, the product of Redmond’s acquisition of Danger, has just unveiled as a pair of handsets sourced from Sharp (which made most of Danger’s Sidekicks) known as the Kin One and Kin Two. Both devices are being marketed as Windows Phones, and while they’re ultimately based on most of the same underpinnings as Windows Phone 7, it’s a completely different experience since the entire user interface is custom to Kin with a heavy social media slant, a custom browser (supposedly based on the Zune browser), and surprisingly no support for third-party apps. The displays do have multitouch (pinching and zooming) but there’s no support for in-browser Flash or Silverlight.

The Kin One is a phone rumored as “Turtle”, basically a curved square slider with a QVGA display, 4GB of internal storage, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and a full QWERTY keyboard. The Kin Two, meanwhile is the phone leaked as the “Pure,” upping the ante with a HVGA display and a more traditional landscape QWERTY slide form factor. It also has an 8 megapixel cam and 8GB of internal storage, but other than that the experience is roughly the same compared to what you get on the One; both phones have WiFi and Bluetooth in addition to 3G cellular radios. For what it’s worth, Microsoft is emphasizing that internal storage really isn’t a big deal with the Kin phones, because your entire photo and video collection that you capture using the onboard camera is synced with online storage, and you can access the entire collection from your phone at any time by browsing thumbnails, and if you want the full content, you can download it. The Kin comes bundled with a desktop web experience that’s entirely based on Silverlight for viewing and sorting just about all the major stuff you can see on your phone such as contacts, social network status updates, images, and so on.

The big focus for Microsoft with Kin is the totally new, different, crazy UI, which is based on blocky, simple text, monochromatic elements, and zoomed-in stylized pictures. The big two features unique to Kin are being called “Sport” and “Loop.” Loop is sort of the of the Kin’s home screen, aggregating social content from your friends from sites such as Facebook and Twitter roughly based on order of priority by how you sort your contents, so you don’t see as many updates from people you don’t follow too closely. Spot, is an ever-present green dot at the bottom of the screen where you can drag content, just about anything like maps, images, status updates, videos, and share it with contacts. It’s similar to an “attach” button for your messaging client.

Both phones will have full support for the Zune music and video experience (not Zune gaming though) and it looks like the Zune HD UI we’re accustomed to, just as it does on Windows Phone 7. To loop into the Mac community, Microsoft will offer a Mac-compatible music side-loader, it won’t be a native client so you won’t be able to shop for music, but it’ll happily connect to iTunes and sync your non-DRM collection. Both phones also have support for over-the-air firmware updates, so you don’t need to tether for that. Data tethering on the other hand is NOT supported.

Verizon was chosen to be the carrier of the Kin One and Kin Two and will be releasing the phones in May, while Vodafone has signed on as the European partner for a Fall launch.

Stay tuned for more info on Microsoft's Kin. You can follow us by staying tuned to MyGadgetNews, following us on Twitter, and subscribing to our RSS feed.