When I wrote the pro-KIN article back in April I had not used or seen the phone. Still to this day I have not, but I have watched several videos of people using them. I don’t need to say that they suck, because the world already knows that.

Microsoft only sold 8,810 units. Ever. To put that into perspective with other recent releases – iPhone 4 had 600,000 pre-orders and Evo 4G sold 150,000 its first weekend. While the KIN is just a feature phone its all time numbers are nothing compared to the rest of the markets first weekend.

I read about the KIN when it was first announced and I agree that the turtle shaped KIN ONE was garbage, but I did fancy the KIN TWO. That is until I actually saw how slowly it ran. It is slow. Slow slow slow. The status updates looked cool, but not when it takes over 30 seconds to load all the information every time you unlock the phone.

This phone seems great for middle school aged kids. They left out one killer feature for this young market. All the kiddies love AIM! There isn’t an instant messaging client for the KIN! Not even for Microsoft’s Live Messenger. I have no idea what they were thinking.

They did do one thing right though – Zune player. The best mp3 player in my opinion is definitely Zune. Microsoft thought it would be a great idea to add it into KIN. From everything I have seen, it was a flawless implementation. This gives me hope for Windows Phone 7, which also sports Zune’s sexy UI.

To conclude, I made a huge mistake. You live and you learn right? Be sure to let me know what an idiot I was in the comments!

A few weeks ago (April 12) Microsoft announced the KIN and it has received much dissension on the internet on tech blogs on user forums. Honestly though what were they expecting? For a long time we have been hearing rumors about Project Pink (Codename for KIN) and they were extremely accurate: a social networking phone targeted at youth.

The KIN is not a useless paperweight, as others would have you believe, but a relatively powerful feature phone. Engadget posted an article confirming that KIN is extremely similar to Zune HD specs wise. The processer is underclocked to 600MHz, which sounds like dial-up compared to the abundance of 1GHz smartphones launching. The iPhone 3GS runs a 600MHz processor as well, so I do not think that anybody will experience speed issues on the KIN.

Microsoft worked very hard to give KIN a good battery life. Their goal was to have it last a weekend on one charge with average use. They claim to have accomplished this. I find this very hard to believe, but I hope that it is true.

MicroSD support is nonexistent. GOOD! I hate removable memory. I do not see the point of it. The argument is that you can upgrade your MicroSD card for more space. Unless the company packages a card with the device, it is just another fee. In addition, removable storage is slower than internal flash storage. Microsoft also wants to keep a lot of your content on the web rendering local storage obsolete.

Have you ever heard of Zune? Well you probably had not before the launch of the Zune HD. KIN has the exact same user experience as the Zune HD for music and videos. Microsoft also shows the KIN as one of the Zune products on the Zune website.

What I love about modern day is the fact that people always have a camera in their pocket. If you do not then your phone is probably five years old… Anyway, the KIN boasts an impressive 5 and 8 MP camera, on the KIN One and KIN Two respectively. Now MPs are not everything, but 8MP means that the KIN Two shoots HD video that can be uploaded to their friends in minutes.

The naysayers’ most logical argument though is very simple… why? Why launch another phone/OS just after announcing the revamped Windows Phone 7? Why not just have KIN be a subset of Windows Phone 7 instead of a different user experience? Why fragment your users before the devices even launch? I do not have answers to any of these questions. Microsoft addressed these questions partly by claiming that they are working on integrating Windows Phone 7 services into the KIN.

There is so much more to be said about these devices, but I think that this is enough for now.

KIN is a bold move by Microsoft. Do you think that it will be a hit or a miss?

Sprint has been toying with its customers for months now. They promised a 2.1 update for the Samsung Moment and HTC Hero in “early Q2.”

Android update! Upgrades to 2.1 for Hero/Moment now expected early 2Q10. Currently working through options for upgrades w/ HTC and Samsung.
-10:42 AM Feb 16th via CoTweet

Now Q2 is April, May, and June, so logically early implies April. Waiting an extra month is torture for some Android users watching other phones like the Motorola Droid and Nexus One touting their brand new 2.1 Operating Systems. Continue Reading

This iPhone app is a game, but the game sucks. It is just a side-scrolling, 2d, action game, and is currently available for free in the App Store.

What makes this game unique is the videos that create an interactive movie experience. If this were a movie released in theaters, then critics would complain about the sub-par acting and poor writing, but an exciting film for action junkies. Continue Reading

I just recently acquired the new Nexus One with the AT&T frequency bands! So far I love it. The only complaints that I have about it reside with the capacitive touch buttons. They can be difficult sometimes, and almost useless when lying flat on a table. Video review after the break.
Continue Reading

Today HTC announced a few new phones. Some of which have Android 2.1 with Sense UI. So far there is not much news on the new additions. What we do know is that there is a new widget called Friend Stream. It aggregrates all of your social networks live on your homescreen.

Speaking of homescreens, you can now pinch on the homescreen to see all of your homescreens at once. This is a much faster what to switch between screens than scrolling past them all.

The Sprint Hero should be expecting this update over the air soon. Sprint just tweeted that it will be updated in early Q2.

Source

A few days ago the internet superpower, Google, announced Buzz.  This is at least their third attempt at a social networking platform.  There was Orkurt, which only seemed to take off in South America and at least one other attempt to gain market share in the social networking arena.  For all intensive purposes we will just say third time is the charm.

To explain Google Buzz in a few words, I would say it is Twitter meets Google Latitude.  The majority of the innovations comes in the mobile version.  Android users can post Buzzes natively on Google Maps and Google Search widget, and other users can access the mobile site.  You can upload pictures and have messages Geo-tagged to your exact location.  Not only does it give an address, but it can also give the name of the store, mall, school, or other place that you are currently in.

Continue Reading

Earlier today Microsoft unveiled its latest creation, Windows Phone 7 Series. It is just a newer version of Windows Mobile that has been built from scratch. This was smart on Microsoft’s part because the only way they could ever catch up would be to forget backwards compatibility and just move forward. This could very well be what they have done since there is no word on whether or not any current programs will be compatible with 7 Series.

Microsoft also realized that resistive technology is a way of the past, and not only made it capacitive touch capable, but all devices are required to have capacitive touch support. There are also some more unreleased minimum specs that are required for all phone manufacturers that wish to have this OS on their smartphones. They also noted that physical keyboards are also permitted to use with the software. Continue Reading

I have mixed opinions about the HTC Hero. In theory, it’s amazing. In practice, it can use a little work.

The phone, of course, comes without a physical keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is decent, though a little more cramped than that of the iPhone. Basically, it would be disastrous without the predictive text. With the predictive text, it’s actually pretty good. With one word, I typed every letter wrong and it still knew what I meant. Impressive, right?

Then there’s the messaging. To me, messaging is the most important function of any phone. It’s all I do every day. It’s somewhat of an improvement over my last phone, as the messages are grouped together into conversations where instead of viewing one message at a time, you can see a whole thread of them. It also allows you to send messages that are more than 160 characters. There is also this really cool feature where the phone tries to guess when messages you received were sent, and insert them in the correct place on the timeline. For example, if someone sends a message a minute before you but you don’t receive it until after send yours, the phone will insert it before your message. Unfortunately, sometimes this messes up and it can be confusing because the phone will show someone answering your question before you actually asked it. Continue Reading

While browsing the App Store today I came across this game. I’ve played a lot of DonutGames’s free iPhone games and thought I would try this one out. So I purchased it for $0.99. After playing it for a minute, I realized that it was just interminable monotonous jumping on a scooter. While I realized this was the concept of the game, I thought it would contain a little more.

Their game Rat on the Run contains the exact Rat Scooter game, and it’s free! The only difference is that there aren’t different “gametypes” for the scooter like on Scooter XL. These “gametypes” are just different items you have to land on to score points, so all of them are essentially one in the same. Continue Reading