The one killer feature the ill-fated Kin phones really had going for them was Kin Studio, which allowed you to tap into the cloud for news, social networking, live updates and the like. Unfortunately, come January 31st, that service is dying, reducing the phones to dumbphone level. You can still call, email, SMS, steam music via Zune Pass and browse the web, but all the cool … [Read more...]
The poor, abortive Kin. Spiritual antecedent to Windows Phone 7, it required a smartphone data plan, but didn't have a smartphone's power, leading it to rather poor sales and a quick demise. Well, Verizon have them back in stock, and under a slightly new name they're going cheap. The ONEm and TWOm go for $19.99 and $49.99 respectively, and no longer require a smartphone data … [Read more...]
Wait, what? That's right, Microsofts abortive not-quite-smartphone, WP7 dry run which failed utterly miserably, is now returning to Verizon. Before you flip your desk and storm out, as would be a natural reaction, you should know that they've changed things a bit. No longer will you be forced to buy a smartphone data package, which made the Kins feel completely inadequate, as … [Read more...]
Poor Kin. Nobody liked it, it was killed in just about zero time, didn't have the functionality of a smartphone, but still cost as much to run. Microsoft's first attempt to get into the sort-of-smartphone market was a textbook failure, with funny looking phones that weren't quite functional enough. Universally panned, it rapidly faded from our consciousness, except as a warning … [Read more...]
One of the more interesting points of Microsoft's earning announcement yesterday was regarding the ill fated Kin. The now discontinued Kin line was a significant drain on the electronics giant. Writing off the project cost $240 million, without even taking into account development costs. That's right, a quarter of a billion dollars got sunk into that unfortunate experiment in … [Read more...]
