Should the Microsoft Kin be Taken Seriously? | Hacker News Reader

Should the Microsoft Kin be Taken Seriously?

blog.bigtimewireless.com

12 pointsnowsourcing12 comments

"Apparently the Kin is intimately connected to the net through something called the Studio, which is basically an online backup for absolutely everything you do on the phone. Texts, emails, photos, contacts, all of it end up in the Studio and displayed in a glorious collage for your viewing pleasure. Does this disturb anyone else? Seriously, a place where everything you do on your phone is plastered up on screen?"

I'm sorry but if you're on a site called "bigtimewireless" and you're posting a phone review (of sorts) you should at least be knowledgeable enough to be familiar with that phone's immediate predecessor. It's not like the Sidekick's popularity was that long ago.

In fact, it was less than a year ago (Oct. '09) when a big controversy in the online world was Sidekick losing the very online data that this reviewer is treating like it's a brand new thing

If they're cheap enough for kids/teens they'll probably dig them.

true, but can't imagine something that should be a phone and only does social stuff.

I agree...they'll take off if they're free with contract, or $50 max, and the unlimited data plans are cheaper than a typical smartphone (in the same way MetroPCS unlimited talk/text/web plans are $40 vs Sprint's $99 Simply Everything plan).

About the cloud aspect, the most intriguing possibility for me is that if the Kin is like a gateway drug, when the teens are ready to move up to Windows 7, migration will be even less painless than connecting to iTunes on a PC or Mac. It also opens the possibility to continue conversations across platforms (e.g. XBox, Tablet, web, Zune, etc) and have them all in sync.

Without games? Without web? Unlikely.

There is a web browser, near the end of this article is it mentioned: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362514,00.asp

Still, it appears to be 3rd party software proof.

Without farts, it does not exist in the teen crowd.

Indeed, no games (I missed this the first time I read the article):

'None of the apps that will be provided on the Windows Phone 7 App Store, which will debut this fall as well, will be able to run on the Kin without Microsoft recoding them, said Paul Patinios, Microsoft's brand manager for the Kin.'

I think that's a big mistake - MS now has a compelling game case with XNA studio for Windows Phone 7. Stopping their own customers from playing them isn't wise.

The cost of devices themselves are so heavily subsidized by the carriers, that unless the data plan was significantly cheaper than a full smartphone, I would have a hard time seeing the Kins finding a niche to fit in above regular phones.

What finally convinced me to get a smartphone was that I was essentially paying for it anyway over the term of the contract just to access trivial amounts of data on a device that could barely display it.

No. It shouldn't.

Yes it may make money, but who honestly believes this is a contender in this brave new world of smartphones? There's nothing exceptional about the phone at all. And it would take something exceptional to break into the market.

Smartphones made up 14% of all phones sold last year [1]. There is a huge market for people who want a smarter phone but don't need a true smartphone because they don't scratch the surface of what the smartphones can do at the cost they are provided (eg iPhone at ~$80/month). If Kin is priced low and the monthly rate is equally low there is huge potential IMO.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone-sales-200...

The phone's interface is completely exceptional and a very different take on what the big three vendors are offering. I wish I had something like that on my BB.

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