Microsoft Kin Two deals & review

In a word or two

The Kin Two is your answer to managing and enjoying your busy social life, on the move.

The Design

The Kin Two has a traditional rectangular shape with a slide-out keyboard and 3.4 inch touchscreen. The only physical button on the front of the phone is an elegant back key, just like the one on the Kin One.

The inbuilt accelerometer means you can switch the screen’s view depending on personal preference as well as when you access the QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is spacious and has a dedicated call button and a search button that launches Bing onscreen.

The touch-sensitive screen is a good size and capacitive in nature so you can navigate and interact effortlessly and swiftly.

Specifications

Microsoft has decided to build on its ability to create mobile operating systems and release its first actual mobile phones – with the help of Sharp, who manufacture the devices. Google recently chose a similar path with its Nexus One, which was manufactured by HTC.

Separating the Kin Two from other social networking slide-out handsets is the Kin service – Loop, Spot and Studio to be precise. With these onboard, you can back-up everything on your phone should you run out of storage space or ever lose your phone; send images and more to friends simply; and enjoy your social activities in the one place.

As you will most likely buy the Kin Two for its social networking prowess, the Kin Loop is an enjoyable feature. Similar to MOTOBLUR on the Motorola Milestone and QUENCH, the Loop delivers details from your favourite websites and sites like Facebook and Twitter onto the one screen. You can reply to messages from this screen and post your own tweets and updates from here too.

In addition to this, is the contacts element of the phone which lets you highlight your closest friends so you can stay in touch with them more easily. On the Kin Two – and Kin One – you can rearrange your contacts according to who you contact most, and then simply click to see all their news and communicate with them how you wish.

And the Kin Spot nicely finishes off the socialising ease of the Kin Two. Press and drag what you want to share – be it a photo or message or tweet – and the people you want to share this with into the spot at the bottom of the screen, and then hit the spot and share.

When it comes to photos, the Kin Two has an 8-megapixel camera capable of high quality images. The camera has an LED flash, smile detection, face detection and geo-tagging, and a video that can record 720p HD footage. When you take pictures, these are automatically saved to the Kin Studio along with every text, email sent/received and friends’ details.

Considerations

The Kin Two has 8GB storage space but no microSD card slot so you can’t increase the memory – although with the Studio you shouldn’t need to. There is no access to an app store for downloading further features or games onto the handset.

Verdict

With impressive social networking features together with a good camera and Zune music player, the Kin Two looks set to be a hit. A full review that includes how much the Kin Two costs is coming soon.