Microsoft Kin Two gets torn apart, reveals Sony image sensor
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 18th 2010 3:57PM
posted May 18th 2010 3:57PM
Sure, we already know most of the Kin Two's main specs, but there's nothing like a proper teardown to find out exactly what makes something tick, and the folks from Chipworks have now kindly ripped one apart so you don't have to. Among the highlights are the expected NVIDIA Tegra APX2600 processor, a slew of chips and memory from the likes of Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Hynix, and Samsung and, perhaps most notably, an image sensor from none other than Sony. That sensor, the IMX046, is one of the smallest in its class with a pixel size of just 1.4 microns and, according to Chipworks, something of a surprise -- they were expecting a sensor from OmniVision. Hit up the links below for the Chipworks' complete blow-by-blow account, as well as some further analysis from the folks at iFixit -- and, no, there isn't a teardown of the Kin One just yet.
Its still an ugly phone IMAO
@kiwi32 What's the A for?
@N900
imo = In my opinion
imao = in my arrogant opinion
@kiwi32
In my ass off?
@N900 Lol. Nice! XD
@KosherTelephone
Thats another way to understand it .
@kiwi32 Well, I think it's pretty Meg too, so I share in your arrogance. =]
Do love the Zune Pass feature though.
@N900
That feature is cool,but beside the fact its microsoft,what does it offer?
And seriously,the look of the phone is so old. I thought we wouldnt see such horror anymore.
Note to Engadget: Remove that AirWick advert that won't shut-up.
And it looks like a futuristic tank.
@kiwi32 To be honest, it offers nothing except ZP, and an 8MP camera. I can't really speak for the featurephone buyers, or the "upload generation", but I figure it's the software that MS hopes to hit home with. Best ask the people over at Facbook what they think about it.
@N900 In My Anal Orifice.
@kiwi32
LOL Oh, the irony...
@Edmunn
As they've said countless times before, they do not have control over the ads that are shown.
@kiwi32
I think the above picture looks better than the complete phone.....
@kiwi32
Intrude my anus...ooo?
It's Sony guts!
@mcryans +1 for beating me to it! lol
Look at all these nips!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How can such a shitty phone have such a great processor? The Kin One is okay, nothing special, but the Kin Two is the lowest of the low. I wonder how hard it would be to port Android to them.
that's fascinating
I wonder if people are actually going to buy a KIN...
Myself, if some of these Android AT&T phones don't get actual release dates soon I'm gonna say screw it and go with iphone again.
The Galaxy S and the Dell mini might as well be phantoms.
@Flaystus My Wife has a KIN one. It's a surprisingly nice form factor and everytime she uses it in public, she gets a lot of questions about it. People seem to really like it.
Since we already have a Zune Pass (and you're allowed to use it on 3 separate devices), it makes a lot of sense. She had a Android based Motorola Cliq that was nothing but problems for her (calls not coming through, locking up, etc). The only major downside she's found for her use is the phone's browser doesn't handle php based message boards very well. She's doesn't give a rip about apps, and is a pretty heavy social media user.
We "jailbreak" iPhone and "root" Android. What shall be call a hacked Kin? For that matter, what shall we call a hacked Windows Phone 7...phone?
@kapanak We 'free' Windows Phone Seven.
Other niffy words: Unravel, Liberate, & Decipher. Personally, I prefer Free.
@WilliamNighthawk
Wow...that is actually...pretty awesome...I like the other words too, save for future OS/Phones?
@kapanak
Its called rooting because you get access to the root of the Android OS.
What is interesting is the Kin uses the same Tegra APX 2600 chipset found in the Zune HD. I wonder if Microsoft has any plans to upgrade the Zune HD software platform sometime down the line to be more inline in what we see with Kin/WP7.
So the analysis? Sony chip is better or worse? Wtf ...
@kapanak call it what you want since jailbreaking is a term more appropriate to BSD systems. They have a virtualization implementation called Jail that Apple picked up through FreeBSD, and jailbreaking is getting out of that virtualization back to root access.
How about just Administrator, and breaking out called jailbreak?
SONY GUTS!!
@DougieBear
Nah,as explained earlier In My Arrogant Opinion
Better luck next time...
@darkmax
100% agree.
The keyboard's built into the mainboard. Or, should I say, the "only" board. The G1 had a half-dozen or more modules connected inside the case. Two just for radio functions. The camera was separate. Keyboard, too. If, as it appears, this phone's all on one board, that's gotta save some bucks and increase reliability. Not that I'd buy one, though.
From what I've heard, Sony provides the image sensors for most compact digital cameras (with the exception of Fujifilm's Super CCD and EXR sensors on some of their FinePix cameras), so it doesn't come as a surprise that there would be a Sony sensor in the Kins, too.