Kin is a line of
mobile phones
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...
that was briefly marketed by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
in 2010. Aimed at people between ages 15 and 30, they were designed for
social networking
A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...
. Microsoft invested two years and about US$1 billion developing the Kin platform, beginning with its acquisition of
Danger Incorporated, creators of the
Hiptop or T-Mobile Sidekick.
The Kin ran an
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
based on
Windows CE
Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...
. They were manufactured by
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese electronics company. It is headquartered in Sakai, Osaka, and was founded by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1912 in Honjo, Tokyo, and established as the Hayakawa Metal Works Institute in Abeno-ku, Osaka, in 1924. Since 2016, it is majority o ...
and sold through
Verizon Wireless
Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...
.
The Kin ONE and TWO went on the market on May 14, 2010. Within two months, Verizon stopped selling the phones because of poor sales.
Microsoft scrapped its planned European release, stopped promoting the devices, ceased production, and reassigned the Kin development team to other projects. Microsoft updated its unsold Kin inventory with firmware that removed social and web-based features, and in December 2010 offered these re-purposed units through Verizon stores as limited
feature phone
Feature may refer to:
Computing
* Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch
* Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob
* Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...
s, the Kin ONEm and the TWOm. The Kin TWOm was discontinued in August 2011; unsold inventory could still be found for sale on
deals sites as late as June 2013.
History
Development

The Kin project was first known by the codename Project Pink, and began under direction of Microsoft executive
J Allard.
In order to gain a head start, Microsoft acquired
Danger Incorporated, which built the
Danger Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick,
in 2008 for a purchase price rumored to be around US$500 million.
In September 2009, a
ZDNet source reported that Project Pink would bring an entirely new software stack and services.
Some reports predicted that the new mobile phone platform would be based on the
Zune
Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music ...
media device.
The project was managed by
Roz Ho, a corporate vice president at Microsoft.
Internally, the team used the slogan "Truly Madly Deeply Pink"; in
tweets they used the
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...
"
#tmdp
".
Kin was developed inside Microsoft's Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) division by a group that included staff from Danger.
Handset manufacturers and network carriers were said to be initially enthusiastic about Kin, and vying with each other to be involved with the project.
According to ''
Engadget
Engadget ( ) is a technology news, reviews and analysis website offering daily coverage of gadgets, consumer electronics, video games, gaming hardware, apps, social media, streaming, AI, space, robotics, electric vehicles and other potentially ...
'', there was jealousy and rivalry in Microsoft's executive ranks, and Windows Phone senior vice president Andy Lees managed to wrest control of the Kin project away from Allard, and move it under his Windows Phone division.
Danger's Sidekick, the predecessor to Kin, was based on the
Java programming language
Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...
, but ''Engadget'' says that Lees wanted Kin to run an in-house Microsoft operating system.
Microsoft planned to base Kin on
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...
. Due to delays with Windows Phone, however, the software instead had to be based directly upon
Windows CE
Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...
.
''Engadget'' claims that Lees lacked enthusiasm for the Kin project.
Nonetheless, Microsoft spent a further two years developing the Kin until its release in 2010.
Unveiling
The unveiling of Microsoft Kin began when the company sent out invitations to select reporters for a mystery event in San Francisco on April 12, 2010. The tagline on the invitation said "It's time to share". However, just hours later a source confirmed that the event was about Project Pink (the official name not having been announced yet). The event was held in a night club called Mighty and featured a presentation given by
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Device division.
Microsoft was criticized for an online video advertisement for the phone that depicted a male teenager putting a Kin under his shirt to photograph his naked chest. He was then shown sending the image to a female teenager. The ''Consumer Reports'' group described the advertisement as a "downright creepy sequence," suggesting that it promoted
sexting. In response, Microsoft deleted the "inappropriate" portion of the video.
Discontinuation
Kin had poor sales. Microsoft executives told ''The New York Times'' that they were dismayed that
Verizon Wireless
Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...
staff were not promoting the phones actively enough. After only 48 days on the market, Microsoft discontinued the Kin line on June 30, 2010 and by mid-July 2010 Verizon had returned all their unsold phones to Microsoft.
Kin's planned European release on UK carrier Vodafone was canceled.
“The Kin was a mistake from Day One,” Rob Enderle, principal analyst of Enderle Group, told ''
eWeek
''eWeek'' (''Enterprise Newsweekly'', stylized as ''eWEEK''), formerly ''PCWeek'', is a technology and business magazine. Previously owned by Ziff Davis, then sold to QuinStreet. Nashville, Tennessee marketing company TechnologyAdvice acquired ...
'' magazine. “The extra time they took to convert the Kin from the Sidekick platform to Windows CE made it about a year and a half late to market, and the merger likely added another year and a half. That’s 1.5 to 3 years late depending on when you start the clock.”
Comeback
On November 18, 2010, Verizon Wireless's website confirmed that the Kin ONE and Kin TWO were back on the market with a reworked feature phone operating system, re-badged as Kin ONEm and Kin TWOm. Since the new phone did not use the kin.com website it did not require a data plan. The new version of the phone arrived at Verizon stores in December of that year. Along with the name change and re-classification as feature phones rather than smartphones, the prices of the devices were slashed, with the Kin ONEm reduced from $50 to free, and the Kin TWOm reduced from $100 to $50, with a new two-year contract.
The new feature phone OS removed the web-based and social networking integration features such as Kin Loop, Kin Spot, and Kin Studio. The newer "m" phones (identified by "m" next to the model number and two yellow dots on the corners) could be "downgraded" to the original firmware version via holding "r", "b", and "power" upon turning on the device (a procedure that also erases all the phone's stored data and settings).
The kin.com website was discontinued in January 2011, and all user pictures and other information stored on the website were deleted. Verizon offered a free trade-in to a
3G smartphone to all affected phone owners. After the Kin website shut down, the original Kin ONE and TWO lost access to the same social features that were removed from the ONEm and TWOm, making them also essentially feature phones that did not require a data plan.
Original Kin series features
Microsoft described Kin devices as "social phones",
straddling the
feature phone
Feature may refer to:
Computing
* Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch
* Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob
* Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...
and smartphone markets, with an emphasis on
social networking
A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...
and sharing of content, but without downloadable apps or games.
Social networking
The home screen on Kin was called ''Loop'', and served as an
aggregator for social networking connections from
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
,
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
,
Windows Live
Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were exposed ...
, and
MySpace
Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...
as well as web content from
web feeds
On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors ''syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it by adding the fee ...
.
Commentators noted Loop's 15-minute delay for updates, which CNET's
Ina Fried described as "odd". ''PC World'' argued this delay was at odds with Microsoft's claim that the phone is "always-connected".
Users could not adjust this interval,
although updates could be manually triggered with an on-screen refresh button, or locking then unlocking the phone. Microsoft cited battery life and immature social networking
API
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...
s as reasons for the delay; ''Engadget'' speculated that Microsoft may have been using the delayed messaging to encourage Verizon to offer lower-priced data plans, which would be attractive to the platform's teenage target audience.
Kin did not support uploading photos or videos to
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
.
Retweets, direct messages, viewing single person updates, and opening Twitter links from the Loop were also not supported.
Spot
''Spot'' was a feature that allowed users to add an
e-mail address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineeri ...
or telephone number to an
SMS
Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...
or
MMS, or to attach content (e.g., text, URLs or photos) to emails.
The Spot was represented as an omnipresent colored dot near the bottom center of the screen. To add an address field, the user dragged a recipient's photo to the Spot, then clicked on the Spot, opening a page that allowed the user to create a new email, SMS or MMS.
The Spot could also be used to set up
e-mail attachments, by the user dragging the content to the Spot, then dragged the recipient's photo to the Spot, after which an email could be sent containing those attachments.
However, Kin did not support attachments to non-e-mail media such as MMS and could not be used to send content to social media sites.
Cloud storage
Content from the Kin phone, such as photos, videos and messages, was automatically synchronized to a
cloud service
Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to ISO.
Essential characteristics ...
called ''Kin Studio'', and would then be accessible via a browser on other devices. The Kin Studio website was written in
Silverlight
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich internet applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later version ...
and its appearance was similar to the Kin UI, even including a Spot for sharing content.
Kin Studio was shut down in January 2011.
Camera

The Kin ONE had a five-
megapixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...
camera with
standard-definition video
Standard-definition television (SDTV; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a similar resolution to the ...
recording capabilities. The Kin TWO included an eight-megapixel camera with
720p
720p (720 lines progressive) is a progressive HD signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HD (1.78:1). All major HD broadcasting standards (such as SMPTE 292M) includ ...
video recording. Photos were automatically
geocoded on the original phones, a feature disabled on the "m" phones.
There was no photo editing software for Kin.
Media playback
For media, Kin devices synced with
Zune
Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music ...
desktop software. In addition, the phones were compatible with
Zune Pass. Much like contemporaneous Zune devices, Kin phones could also stream music over a WiFi connection in addition to 3G on the carrier's network. For Mac users, Microsoft, in collaboration with Mark/Space, provided a media syncing tool that pulled audio and video files from
iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...
and photos from
iPhoto
iPhoto is a discontinued image editing software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It was included with every Mac computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application in ...
.
Kin did not support playing video from sites such as
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
or
Hulu
Hulu (, ) is an American Subscription business model, subscription streaming media service owned by Disney Streaming, a subsidiary of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. It was launched on October 29, 2007, initially as ...
, although the devices could watch
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
videos from the browser through WiFi or 3G.
Applications
Kin had no
app store
An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...
and no third-party
apps could be installed on the phones.
''
PC World
''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online-only publication.
It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tec ...
'' described this as "baffling".
Further, the web browser did not support
Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Barry Allen
** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...
web applications,
and there were no games for the phones.
Microsoft had stated their intention to eventually merge the Kin and Windows Phone platforms, with downloadable apps then being available for the combined platform.
Missing features
Reviewers highlighted a number of notable omissions from Kin's initial feature set:
*
Contact list
A contact list is a collection of screen names. It is a commonplace feature of instant messaging, Email clients, online games and mobile phones. It has various trademarked and proprietary names in different contexts.
Contacts lists' windows ...
s could only be copied from another phone by Verizon store employees. There was no way for the consumer to do this by any known means (
over the air
Over the Air was an annual mobile technology-focused overnight Hackathon, hack day event held in London from 2008 to 2016. The two-day event would include practical and educational talks and a hacking competition. Sponsors of the event have inc ...
, via a memory or
SIM card
A typical SIM card (mini-SIM with micro-SIM cutout)A SIM card or SIM (subscriber identity module) is an integrated circuit (IC) intended to securely store an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number and its related key, which are u ...
, wirelessly via
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...
and
vCard
vCard, also known as VCF ("Virtual Contact File"), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, N ...
, or via direct USB cable connection).
*Kin had no calendar or appointment application,
nor any ability to sync with
Outlook
Outlook or The Outlook may refer to:
Computing
* Microsoft Outlook, also referred to as ''the classic Outlook'' an e-mail client and personal information management software product from Microsoft
* Outlook for Windows, also referred to as ''the ...
calendar or
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed by Google. It was created by Mike Samuel as part of his 20% project at Google. It became available in Software release life cycle#Beta, beta release April 13, 2006, ...
.
Some commentators suggested that a social phone should be able to share a social events calendar.
*Kin was unable to
Instant Message
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate (real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involvin ...
(IM), or use any IM client,
which was considered odd for a phone built for messaging and aimed at the youth market.
It was discovered that the
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
inside the phones contained the foundation for an IM system supporting
AOL Instant Messenger
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence information computer program created by AOL. It used the proprietary OSCAR protocol, OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow us ...
,
Windows Live Messenger
MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...
, and
Yahoo! Messenger, but it was never made operational. It was speculated that future revisions of the software would have enabled instant messaging.
*There was no
spelling correction or
predictive text
Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the physical numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather than r ...
input.
Network charges
In the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, cellular telephone provider
Verizon Wireless
Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...
sold the Kin phones with a voice plan starting at $39.99 per month. An optional ''Zune Pass'' cost $14.99 per month for music access.
After the kin.com website was discontinued in January 2011, the original Kin ONE and Kin TWO did not require a data plan, although the optional ''Zune Pass'' was still available.
Relationship to Windows Phone
The Microsoft Kin has been described as a "close cousin" to
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...
,
with shared user interface characteristics. According to Microsoft, "Both KIN and Windows Phone share common OS components, software and services. We will seek to align around a single platform for both products as well as consistent hardware specifications."
Microsoft said that the underlying fundamentals of Kin and Windows Phone were held together by similar core technologies. Both operating systems ran the same
Silverlight
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich internet applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later version ...
platform,
with Microsoft's stated intention being to eventually merge Windows Phone with Kin.
Kin "m" series features
In November 2010, Microsoft and Verizon re-launched the Kin phones, re-labeling them as feature phones with no required data plan. The prices of the phones also were slashed. Where the Kin TWO was formerly $100 on a two-year contract, the new Kin TWOm was offered at $20 on contract. Similarly, the Kin ONE, formerly $50 on a contract, was now free on contract.
The new firmware on the repurposed "m" phones removed several data-centric features of the operating system, including many of the devices' social elements such as the Loop home screen, the Spot, and access to the Kin Studio cloud storage site, which was shut down in January 2011. With the lack of a data plan requirement and lower prices up front, Microsoft and Verizon hoped to do what they originally planned: capture the teenage market.
Zune music
One seemingly data-laden feature of the old Kin devices which remained available for the repurposed phones was
Zune Pass, although it was now able to stream music only over Wi-Fi, even when customers had 3G data enabled, to conserve data. This was done to accommodate Verizon's new tiered data plans, which marked the end of unlimited data for users.
Users were also able to sync music, podcasts, TV shows, and movies to their Kin phones through the Zune software. Music could be downloaded directly to the phones as well, though only over Wi-Fi. Podcasts, TV shows, and movies could only be synced to the phone via the Zune Software on a Windows PC.
New features
The "m" series added a calendar and a calculator application, to address complaints that these were missing functions that even the most basic feature phone typically has. Although the calendar application had basic features such as timed alerts and reminders, as well as day, month, and year views, it could not be synchronized with
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...
,
Microsoft Exchange, or even
Windows Live
Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were exposed ...
Hotmail
Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...
.
Missing features
Along with the discontinued social networking features, the phones no longer
geocode
A geocode is a code that represents a geographic entity (location or Geographical feature, object). It is a unique identifier of the entity, to distinguish it from others in a finite set of geographic entities. In general the ''geocode'' is a ...
d pictures. Other features missing on the original version continued to be absent, including disallowing Bluetooth access for
file transfer
File transfer is the transmission of a computer file through a communication channel from one computer system to another. Typically, file transfer is mediated by a communications protocol. In the history of computing, numerous file transfer protoc ...
and
wireless printing.
The Kin TWOm was unable to forward previously sent messages. Text messages were sent in a chat style format, making it unable to single out a specific text message.
Browser
"The KIN uses a proprietary browser made specifically for the KIN. No other browsers can be used or downloaded. Silverlight was used for the creation of the KIN studio, not the browser."
The browser identified itself as
"IEMobile 6.12." The full user agent string was:
Devices
Kin ONE and ONEm
*Originally codenamed Turtle
* QWERTY keyboard that slides up and lies on top of the phone
* 2.6" TFT, QVGA (320 x 240) Display
* Capacitive touch screen
* 5-megapixel camera, with LED flash
* 4 GB of storage, 256 MB DDR RAM
*
Nvidia Tegra at 600 MHz
* Mono Speaker
* GPS
* Accelerometer
* Bluetooth 2.1 with
A2DP
In order to use Bluetooth, a device must be compatible with the subset of Bluetooth ''profiles'' (often called services or functions) necessary to use the desired services. A Bluetooth profile is a specification regarding an aspect of Bluetooth-b ...
* Wi-Fi
* USB (for charging, syncing with Zune Software)
Microsoft Kin TWO and TWOm made by Sharp for Verizon
* Originally codenamed Pure
* Basic phone—not smartphone: no contract required
* Side-sliding QWERTY keyboard
* 3.4" TFT, HVGA (480x320) pixel display
* Capacitive touch screen
* 8-megapixel camera, with Lumi LED flash
* 720p video recording
* 8 GB of storage, 256 MB DDR RAM
* no SD expansion slot
*
Nvidia Tegra at 600 MHz
* Stereo speakers
* Kin Studio, Kin Loop, and GPS software on Kin Two; removed from Kin TwoM (services are no longer available)
* Accelerometer
* Bluetooth 2.1 with
A2DP
In order to use Bluetooth, a device must be compatible with the subset of Bluetooth ''profiles'' (often called services or functions) necessary to use the desired services. A Bluetooth profile is a specification regarding an aspect of Bluetooth-b ...
* Wi-Fi
* USB (for charging, syncing with free Zune Software)
* Two has no calculator or calendar; TwoM has both
See also
*
Zune HD
*
Microsoft Mobile
Microsoft Mobile Osakeyhtiö, Oy was a Finnish subsidiary of Microsoft engineering groups#Windows + Devices, Microsoft Devices involved in the development and manufacturing of mobile phones. Based in Keilaniemi, Espoo, it was established in 2014 ...
– the mobile phone line by Microsoft with acquiring from
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...
*
Microsoft Lumia
*
Danger, Inc.
Danger, Inc. was an American company specializing in hardware design, software, and services for mobile computing devices. Founded on December 9, 1999, its most notable product was the T-Mobile US, T-Mobile T-Mobile Sidekick, Sidekick (also known ...
*
List of defunct consumer brands
This is a list of defunct (mainly American) consumer brands which are no longer made and usually no longer Mass marketing, mass-marketed to consumers. Brands in this list may still be made, but are only made in modest quantities and/or limited runs ...
References
External links
Gizmodo article about KinMicrosoft's Channel 9 Demo Video
*
(Verizon Wireless)">ttp://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/sharp-kin-twom-verizon/4505-6454_7-34431182.html Sharp KIN TWOm (Verizon Wireless)overview & user reviews
{{Microsoft hardware
Defunct consumer brands
Kin
Mobile phones introduced in 2010
Products and services discontinued in 2010
Sharp Corporation mobile phones
Verizon Wireless