Unboxing the Kin One and Kin Two

Last week the friendly folks at Verizon sent me not one, but two review units: the Kin One and Kin Two!

Both devices are made by Sharp and run a social networking-centric OS based on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft.

The hardware is of typical modern smartphone fare, with a capacitive touchscreen, a full set of radios and sensors (3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS & accelerometer), and a physical landscape slider keyboard…

Kin One features a smaller 320×240 pixel display, a 5 MP camera (with auto-focus, LED flash & SD video recording), and 4 GB of built-in storage. Kin Two features a larger 480×320 pixel display, an 8 MP camera (with auto-focus, LED flash & HD video recoding), and 8 GB of built-in storage.

The software is – let’s not mince words here – interesting but flawed. That’s my impression after a couple days. The user interface is not very intuitive, despite some good concepts. Some basic apps are missing: there’s no calendar or IM client.

Even social networking support – Kin’s raison d’être – is lacking. There’s no direct message support in Twitter, for example. To make matters worse, the whole experience is often sluggish and buggy.

An then there’s pricing. The devices require a smartphone data plan, putting them out of reach of the intended audience. At least Kin Studio, a website that allows you to manage the content on Kin devices, is quite nice :)

Take a look at my unboxing pictures (slide show) and videos (one and two):