Kin One and Two

Microsoft recently announced the Kin One and Kin Two, two brand new mobile phones that are aimed squarely at the social networking generation. It’s primarily designed to keep users in the know when it comes to their friends – where they are and what they’re up to.

Everything that you need to know is easily accessible through the home page called the “loop”, where the simple text, monochromatic elements and the design of interface look similar to Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Phone 7.

The loop is akin to a social content aggregator, and reads status feeds from Twitter, Facebook and the like. Unlike your regular aggregator however, you are able to prioritize the people you want to follow closely, and as a result you will see more status updates from them, pushing low priority people deep in the background.

Derek Snyder, senior product manager for the Kin team describes it as “not just a grid of applications, it’s something that’s totally personal to me.” He also adds that “the loop is alive, and we have cloud infrastructure that’s pushing down updates from all my favorite social networks. It’s like its delivering to me a magazine of my life”. The loop also makes it easy to update your status message across multiple social networks.

An essential part of the Kin experience is the “Spot”, a little green dot the bottom of the screen. The spot allows you to share everything you want, from search results from Bing to a new website you just found. You just need to drag what you want to share to the spot, and select the people you want to share it to.

The Kin’s apparent reliance on cloud infrastructure is most apparent in the way it handles media. Like most phones, the Kin has a built-in camera and storage. Unlike most phones, however once you take a photo or video it’s automatically backed up through the cloud. So even if you do manage to lose your phone, you’ll still be able to access the pictures and videos you’ve taken.

To top off the already delicious cake that is Kin is the Kin Studio. In a nutshell, it allows you to do everything you can do on your phone (sans calling and texting, of course) like change your status, share photos and the like. It also gives you access to all your media (remember, the Kin backs up your media to the internet automatically) and allows you to share them to your contacts.

With the overhaul of Windows Mobile and the heavy focus of Kin on social networks, Microsoft is finally getting its groove back on. The year isn’t even halfway done, and I’m sure Microsoft still has a few more bombs to drop.