Posted by Matt Kolowski on Mon, Jul 12, 2010
No, I’m not talking about Windows Phone 7, which IT Support Engineers like me are actually excited about. I’m talking about the Microsoft KIN phones. They were billed as the new-ish SideKick phones for tweens and the like. Microsoft calls them the “upload generation”. HA!
I guess you could now call them the “I’m not dumb enough to buy your POS phone that doesn’t do anything I want generation”. Am I right, folks!?
The KIN one & two phones were slim on features but really concentrated on kids that wanted their social content all at once: Myspace, the Twitter, RSS Feeds, and Facebook. They all showed up in the main screen updating through the day. The problem was these feeds only updated every 15 minutes. Oh well, you still had email, right? Sure, if you had a LIVE account. Otherwise, beat it. Obviously this phone is not something we'd recommend for Mobile IT solutions.
Oof.
Not to worry. It’s not like these kids are in the smartphone market. They want a cheap phone with an also cheap monthly plan so they can text their little hearts out. What? The phones were $50 and $100 after rebate? And they *had* to be sold with a Verizon Smartphone monthly contract, like any DROID phone? Good grief, Charlie Brown. That’s just silliness.
One can only hope that Microsoft has learned from these mistakes and will push forward with Windows Phone 7…right?
(cue ominous music)
