Kin available online starting tomorrow, in Verizon stores on May 13
By Chris Ziegler 
posted May 5th 2010 11:49AM
posted May 5th 2010 11:49AM
SHARE LIFE AS YOU LIVE IT – KIN NOW AVAILABLE ON VERIZON WIRELESS NETWORK
Broadcast and Share Everyday Moments on the Nation's Most Reliable Network
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and REDMOND, Wash. – For people who want to keep up and share everything going on in their lives with the people who matter most, Verizon Wireless and Microsoft Corp. will make KIN available online on May 6. Designed specifically for people who are actively navigating their social lives, KIN blends the phone, online services and the PC. Both KIN phones feature a touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, making it easy to:
· Always stay in the loop: With the KIN Loop, all of your favorite people and things you love are right on your home screen in real time. You tell KIN who and what is important, and it delivers the latest updates from your favorite websites and social networks such as Facebook®, MySpace and Twitter. You can discover and share, all from one place.
· Share your story with the world: The KIN Spot is the new way to share. Share almost anything – photos, texts, Web pages – with almost anyone. Since the Spot is always on your screen, it's unbelievably easy to drop stuff into the Spot and send by text, e-mail or social network update.
· Your phone, on the Web: With the KIN Studio, almost everything on your phone – messages, contacts, photos and videos – are backed up to a private, password-protected website where you can visit all of your memories anywhere there is a computer. And with virtually unlimited storage, there's almost no limit to what you can keep.
· Capture and share all your memories: The KIN Camera captures all the moments that matter most, and makes it easy to share them. The KIN ONE has a 5 MP lens while the KIN TWO has an 8 MP lens and shoots video in HD. With anti-shake, autofocus and an LED flash, KIN lets you take amazing pictures, even in low light, and post or share them with just one touch. And all your memories are backed up with tons of storage in the KIN Studio.
· Tunes and info – at your fingertips: Find what you need on the go:
o Zune – KIN is the first Windows Phone to feature a Zune experience – including music, video, FM radio and podcast playback. With a Zune Pass subscription and Zune software on your PC, you can listen to millions of songs from Zune Marketplace on your KIN while on the go or load from your personal collection.
o Bing – Web and Near Me (location-based) search.
o E-mail – Support for all popular Web-based mail, POP/IMAP services, as well as Exchange for business e-mail and contact sync. Each e-mail account has its own screen so it's easy to navigate.
o Browser – With KIN, you get full, rich PC-like browsing. You can pan, scan and zoom in and out using touch gestures. And browsing is social; it's easy to share a snapshot of the website you're viewing by dragging it to the Spot.
Pricing and availability
· Starting May 6, KIN is available online at www.verizonwireless.com and will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on Thursday, May 13. KIN ONE is available for $49.99, and KIN TWO is available for $99.99, both after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
· To get the most from KIN, Verizon Wireless customers will need to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Talk plan and an Email and Web for Smartphone plan. Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99 monthly access. Email and Web for Smartphone plans start at $29.99 for unlimited monthly access.
· For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.
· For more information and a specification sheet, please visit www.KIN.com.
Broadcast and Share Everyday Moments on the Nation's Most Reliable Network
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and REDMOND, Wash. – For people who want to keep up and share everything going on in their lives with the people who matter most, Verizon Wireless and Microsoft Corp. will make KIN available online on May 6. Designed specifically for people who are actively navigating their social lives, KIN blends the phone, online services and the PC. Both KIN phones feature a touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, making it easy to:
· Always stay in the loop: With the KIN Loop, all of your favorite people and things you love are right on your home screen in real time. You tell KIN who and what is important, and it delivers the latest updates from your favorite websites and social networks such as Facebook®, MySpace and Twitter. You can discover and share, all from one place.
· Share your story with the world: The KIN Spot is the new way to share. Share almost anything – photos, texts, Web pages – with almost anyone. Since the Spot is always on your screen, it's unbelievably easy to drop stuff into the Spot and send by text, e-mail or social network update.
· Your phone, on the Web: With the KIN Studio, almost everything on your phone – messages, contacts, photos and videos – are backed up to a private, password-protected website where you can visit all of your memories anywhere there is a computer. And with virtually unlimited storage, there's almost no limit to what you can keep.
· Capture and share all your memories: The KIN Camera captures all the moments that matter most, and makes it easy to share them. The KIN ONE has a 5 MP lens while the KIN TWO has an 8 MP lens and shoots video in HD. With anti-shake, autofocus and an LED flash, KIN lets you take amazing pictures, even in low light, and post or share them with just one touch. And all your memories are backed up with tons of storage in the KIN Studio.
· Tunes and info – at your fingertips: Find what you need on the go:
o Zune – KIN is the first Windows Phone to feature a Zune experience – including music, video, FM radio and podcast playback. With a Zune Pass subscription and Zune software on your PC, you can listen to millions of songs from Zune Marketplace on your KIN while on the go or load from your personal collection.
o Bing – Web and Near Me (location-based) search.
o E-mail – Support for all popular Web-based mail, POP/IMAP services, as well as Exchange for business e-mail and contact sync. Each e-mail account has its own screen so it's easy to navigate.
o Browser – With KIN, you get full, rich PC-like browsing. You can pan, scan and zoom in and out using touch gestures. And browsing is social; it's easy to share a snapshot of the website you're viewing by dragging it to the Spot.
Pricing and availability
· Starting May 6, KIN is available online at www.verizonwireless.com and will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on Thursday, May 13. KIN ONE is available for $49.99, and KIN TWO is available for $99.99, both after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
· To get the most from KIN, Verizon Wireless customers will need to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Talk plan and an Email and Web for Smartphone plan. Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99 monthly access. Email and Web for Smartphone plans start at $29.99 for unlimited monthly access.
· For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.
· For more information and a specification sheet, please visit www.KIN.com.
@Strikerage LOL... Im sure your joking... But seriously... I have seen alot more Pre & Pixi's on the street/school etc... I love it...
I cannot imagine what HP/Palm will do together... Two great American Silicon Valley comps working together!
OK, here is what they should do:
Have it free with a all around $30 monthly charge. Then add texting packages. Make it as simple as possible, while exploiting the market that they are designed for(the texting teens/tweens).
@greg787 The $30 would be all data and maybe calls. I don't see them calling that much. But I could be wrong.
What does everyone else think the plans should have been
this makes the Pre and a Pixi alot more easier to sell..
Not that I'd ever waste my money on either of these phones, especially the Kin One, the My Touch Slide announcement pretty much sealed the deal. Goodbye Verizon, hello T-Mobile.
On a side note, if you took the Sidekick LX '09, gave it a touch screen, shrink it down a bit, and give it Android 2.0+, I'd buy that shit in a second. All this Kin talk just reminds me of what Danger *could* be doing right now instead of this shit, lol.
$30 a month is a rip off, they should charge this like text message not as full data plan.
I'm sorry, but that is a horrible design. Sure, the OS looks pretty, but agh, it looks so... ugly, oogly, and fugly all at the same time!
@cherryboom Just like Apple then?
Although i'm not a fan of the phones, glad to see verizon trying something new with these. There definitely is a place for these phones among teens especially, and if verizon gets aggressive with the advertising, these may indeed be popular.
Why is data so expensive? Here in the Netherlands its about $ 13 a month...
@Lydus
We've been asking that for years here. Still waiting for an answer.
Best guess is greed coupled with unplanned collusion among the carriers.
Microsoft is completely out of touch with the current mobile phone market.
How could they NOT see the $29.99 a month coming by going with Verizon? It's been that way for every phone for the past few years now.
They should have went to Verizon first to figure out a pricing deal, then work on the Kin models. Now they have a pretty decent phone with a price that no one is going to jump at.
This phone is dead on arrival.
@osterzone
And this is entirely what is wrong with the current carrier system in the USA. The carriers decide who they work with, not the device makers.
If none want to work with you, you go nowhere. If they decide to overcharge your product out of its target market, nothign you can do about it. They control what happens or doesn't.
That's why I said in similar articles that if MS wants this to happen, they need to launch it globally rather than suck NA carrier balls.
Hmmm... when's SP1 coming out for this OS? I hope they have CTRL-ALT-DEL as buttons.... :)
I'm definitely waiting to see the REAL review...
From the Washington Post: But there's one disturbing problem with the Kin Studio: You can't delete photos off your phone without deleting them from the Kin Studio. In some ways, Microsoft's explanation for implementing this makes sense. If a user wants to delete, say, an incriminating photo from a bar the night before, they probably want it completely erased from existence. But if you're simply deleting photos to free up some storage on your phone, this is a big problem since the Kin One's memory is restricted to 4GB (no microSD support). Realistically, 4GB of memory really isn't enough to hold all of your photos, videos and music.
@kent99 Interestingly, the Washington Post has it wrong. Photos and videos aren't physically stored on the phone -- that's one of the major selling points Microsoft is pushing with Kin. They're downloaded in real-time over the network as you request them, so for the most part, you're only using your local storage for music.
Kin somebody please tell me what purpose this phones are supposed to serve? You can gt a kick ass android phone for around the same price.
@cherryboom yeah because cook, jobs & ive are not schmucks.
And nobody cares...
From the review posted last night the Kin family is destined to epicly fail. If I had a kid who was a teenager I would get him/her a blackberry or android headset over the kins without data lol much better texting devices anyway
@David Bailey And I think MS tried to pull an 'iPad' with the KIN... u know.... removing major features and performing the remaining simple features in a 'simpler' way.
I'm anxious to see how the KIRFs will respond to these phones :)
Why does microsoft feel that a cluttered UI somehow makes for a next generation phone. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!
The little one looks like a Tamagotchi!! sheesh!
iPhone competition fail. Same data plan price and half or the same price as a 3G? I think not.
sounds like someone is trying to figure who is stupid enough to pay for this given that it is on smartphone contract without the full smartphone features.
I like the hardware design, I like the UI, but!
I hate the price, and hate the monthly fee.
I know pricing will go down as new phones comes out but the plan for $30 when it doesn't even do a constant update nor will it even upload HD videos. Guess it's Verizon's premium pricing....
the only way they have any chance of selling this phone well is if they market it like the Devour...
After reading engadgets review, who would still want to buy these phones?
@enaybee they are targeted at 14 year olds, not engadget readers. i realize they are still a terrible buy, but that logic makes no sense
what kin it do?
hm it says joshua topolsky on the screen, he's the guy that leads the engadget show right? Or perhaps that's another joshua on the screen...
To find out if the people she's never actually met are her friends.
Looks like cheap cellphones with a very expensive operating system.
@hated one This was never meant to be a competitor to the iPhone, or any smartphone for that matter. Which is the main reason why it will fail. Smartphone pricing, dumbphone features. Pricing was key here and they dropped the ball big time.
The main reason I was excited about the Kin, back when it was Project Pink, was that I was hoping the phone would be something closer to what the Zune HD is. Make it a little bigger/thicker if you have to (that's what she said), but keep the industrial design the same.
Except for the $350 termination fee, the Pre or Pixi Plus is a way better deal if you have to buy a smartphone priced data plan. Droid Eris too. They even have 2 WM phones under $100 if you want a Windows phone. WHAT are they thinking selling these at their smartphone prices?
This phone will fail with that data charge. The end.
This phone won't sell well with the pricey data plan because you could get the droid if you look around my cousin hot one for around that much
@HighestRanked2
Do you even know how the console market works? Noone cares if they make money off the consoles. It's gravy if they do, but the big target is to make money from the games and resulting subscriptions in Xbox's case. And last I heard, Xbox Live is preferred... by the consumers of console games.
Preteen girls & sissies are rejoicing at the release of these phones :)
Can't wait. For the next Palm/HP phone.
Verizon only?
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.
AT&T NEVER gets any of the good phones!
f**k you iPhone.
@kyle shappley If you think this is a good phone, well, I won't comment...
Are these GSM ?. And what about in Europe,,,,,,, RELEASE DATES ?
Wow, most impressive. Looks like its gonna be a pretty cool device.
Lou
www.being-anonymous.at.tc
The kin one appeals to the teenage mutant ninja turtle in you.
@HighestRanked2
It must be pretty hard for you to live up to your name.
Having followed MS since the 90's - it has been fun witnessing the parade of fail that MS has brought us in the last decade. From Vista, to the Zune, to their retail stores, to the Surface & the DOA Courier, Bing, WinMo, and just the general decline in their relevance in the ever-evolving digital world. It is so nice to see that are no longer the tech dictatorship they once were, and their influence has been deteriorating rapidly. They are no longer anything close to the Juggernaut they were, nor will they ever be again. Karma, bitches! Awesome job Ballmer!
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