September 16, 2010 at 17:26Microsoft Kin One - Experience
On Habré already discussed a party concerning Microsoft`s launch of Kin One and Kin Two, there was also a review of devices.
Recently, a network acquaintance sent me his experience using Kin One, I think the Habrasociety will be interested to read about it.
Further - the author’s text without abbreviations. ( Caution - a lot of text !!! )
It is no secret that Microsoft’s Kin One and Kin Two mobile phones failed miserably in the US market: according to various “informed sources”, Verizon Wireless managed to sell from 500 to 10,000 copies of these models in the first six weeks of sales. Is it a lot or a little? Let’s put it this way: it’s not just a failure, but a whole disaster and the real “shame of the jungle”, because not one hundred million dollars have been invested in the development of devices. (Of course, it is hardly fair to compare Kina with the iPhone 4, and yet: the latter sold 1.7 million units in three days.)
It is for this reason that Microsoft announced that the “launch” of Kin one and Kin Two planned for the fall in Europe is canceled, while in the US they will be available for a while from Verizon Wireless. Meanwhile, the Kin development team will engage in bringing to mind the Windows Phone 7 operating system, which is now entrusted with all the "mobile" hopes of the corporation.
What does all this mean in practice? Existing versions of Kin One and Kin Two are designed for CDMA EV-DO networks, and modifications to the usual GSM / UMTS networks will not be released.
Well, now the time has come for one confession: on April 11 (the day of the announcement of Kin phones) I saw a photo of the Kin One model and suddenly realized: “I WANT!”. Yes, the device looks very unusual, and the “average user” is unlikely to buy it (which was proved by sales in the USA), but ... I generally like square and “egg-shaped” models with sliding keyboards: in the near future I will get a Motorola FlipOut, and The Nokia X5-1, announced at CommunicAsia 2010, attracted me too.
But back to Kin One. So, European sales of Kin phones have been canceled, but I still want to get hold of such a device for the collection. And not just get hold of it, but get a working copy - so that you can make calls, receive calls, visit web pages and so on and so forth. Since in Ukraine, where I live, there are several CDMA mobile phone operators with the same Verizon Wireless frequencies, the idea came up to order Kin One from the USA and try to connect with us.
Naturally, this approach also had a number of “pitfalls” - let’s say, I was not able to figure out in advance whether the Kin phones were “locked” to the Verizon Wireless network or not. There is no normal community of owners of these devices for obvious reasons, and, judging by the reviews in foreign online forums, nobody thought of using Kin One outside the United States.
Actually, I looked at the eBay online auction and found out that almost all “Kins” can be delivered to the buyer only in the United States. There was only one lot with Worldwide delivery, and the seller - by the way, my former compatriot - also did not know anything about the “lock”. Like, "the phone is disconnected from Verizon, it does not have a SIM card slot, and I can’t guarantee anything at all." Talking with our local sellers of phones for CDMA networks inspired a little more hope: according to them, the equipment of the American operator Sprint is almost always “locked up”, while modems and handsets from Verizon Wireless are most often suitable for use on other networks without unnecessary tricks. In general, I decided to take a chance. He transferred $ 250 to the Ukrainian American and five days later (yes, I was also surprised,
I’ll tell you about my impressions of the device below, and now about the epic with the connection to the Intertelecom operator. So, in the office of this company, Kin One was not particularly surprised - apparently, various kinds of exotic from the USA are brought to them regularly. They were not surprised to be surprised, but they could not connect the device to the network on the first attempt, and it was not at all their fault.
The fact is that Kin One is defined by the operating systems Windows XP, Vista and 7 simply as “Kin Portable Media Player”. That is, you can then launch the Zune Software package and upload a bunch of songs, pictures and videos to the phone’s memory, but they don’t see it at point blank range for downloading the PRL file with the settings of the operator of the program. This requires special drivers - Pink CDMA Diagnostic (Pink is the name of the project in which Kin One and Kin Two were created); in addition, to install them, you must enter the secret code and password (## 77647266488 and 000000, respectively) from the keyboard, and then change the PC connection mode to USB Pass-Through in the menu that appears. After that, the device will be designated as Pink CDMA Diagnostic in the application manager, the Windows operating system will try to find "firewood" and will not find anything, and you can substitute them yourself. So, we searched for these drivers on the Internet for more than a week. And they didn’t find anything.
I already took Kin One from Intertelecom’s office, deciding that it was his fate to lie on the shelf, recalling two and a half hundred spent in vain ... But a couple of days later, the KinPixiPreCentroTreo800w_etc_DiagDrivers.rar archive (52 kb) was uploaded to XDA-Developers.com . Allegedly, it contained all the drivers necessary for connecting in the “diagnostic” mode. Downloaded. I tried it. Does not work. That is, Windows scans the folder (three files with the * .inf extension and two with the * .sys extension) and reports that there are no correct drivers in it. Meanwhile, I noticed that the Device ids of the phone in the device manager of the operating system contains the value Vid_056C, and for some reason Vid_05C6 is written in drivers opened with Notepad with the extension * .inf. Corrected, saved. Earned! The drivers are installed and Kin One is displayed in the Ports Device Manager section (COM & LPT) as the [CAIN] Microsoft KIN Passthru Diag Port (COM1). Intertelecom engineers didn’t have any problems - the very next day, Kin One was connected. As it turned out, the phone was not locked on the Verizon Wireless network. I note that after a couple of weeks of operation, the device suddenly stopped loading web pages - that is, the ability to make and receive calls remained, but the Internet "lay". The problem was solved by reloading the PRL file in the operator’s office, although the sediment remained. Who knows - when will Kin One “die out” the next time? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Here I note that the phone can not be used as a modem for a PC. on the Verizon Wireless network the phone was not locked. I note that after a couple of weeks of operation, the device suddenly stopped loading web pages - that is, the ability to make and receive calls remained, but the Internet "lay". The problem was solved by reloading the PRL file in the operator’s office, although the sediment remained. Who knows - when will Kin One “die out” the next time? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Here I note that the phone can not be used as a modem for a PC. on the Verizon Wireless network the phone was not locked. I note that after a couple of weeks of operation, the device suddenly stopped loading web pages - that is, the ability to make and receive calls remained, but the Internet "lay". The problem was solved by reloading the PRL file in the operator’s office, although the sediment remained. Who knows - when will Kin One “die out” the next time? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Here I note that the phone can not be used as a modem for a PC.
Next, we give the ten most interesting, in my opinion, facts about Kin One. I think they’ll best talk about the nuances of using the phone and, possibly, even the reasons for its failure.
1. The Japanese company Sharp is engaged in assembling Kin phones (it also produced Danger SideKick phones, acquired by Microsoft in 2008), which is proudly written on their back panels. That's just the quality of this assembly itself can not be called high: the backlash of the halves does not just take place, but even annoys, and the battery cover does not hold very tightly. By the way, scuffs have already appeared on a pair of buttons, although the upper part of the phone does not seem to be in contact with the keyboard.
As for the materials, Kin One uses various plastics - the back is made of quickly getting dirty soft-touch, and the front is made of translucent smoky plastic. In general, if the same metal Zune HD leaves an impression of a cool quality thing, then Kin One is perceived as ... Let's say, like an inexpensive toy (most of all Kin One resembles "Tamagotchi"). Most likely, the developers decided to use plastic because of the mass of wireless modules: Qualcomm QSC6085 CDMA chipset, GPS receiver, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, as well as FM radio.
2. Kin phones are based on the first-generation nVidia Tegra “chip system”, which is also the basis for the Zune HD media player. That's just the interface of the latter works really very quickly and smoothly, and Kin One can be called a real "brake". For example, in order to go from the main menu to dialing, you need to wait a half seconds. Slowly almost all menu items and applications open, and the phone turns on very slowly.
3. Both the email client and the web browser display “hieroglyphs” instead of Cyrillic characters. The phone also does not understand messages with Russian letters - they arrive empty. If the text contained both Cyrillic and Latin letters, then the text will also be empty. After meeting the terrible Zune HD web browser last winter, I assumed that the Kin One browser in our realities would also behave badly, but it exceeded all expectations. The player normally displayed at least some Russian sites (approximately 1 out of 10), and Kin One is not even capable of this. In fairness, I note that the phone is intended only for the United States, so it’s not worth scolding him too much. Moreover, he "digests" the tags of MP3 files quite adequately - and there are no problems with the Cyrillic alphabet.
4. The 2.6-inch capacitive touch TFT-screen (240x320 pixels) was not impressive. Apparently, Kin One uses a very cheap matrix - in the sun it “fades”, and the color rendition is far from ideal. Say, the Sony Ericsson P1i has a display with the same parameters (perhaps only resistive), and it is also far from modern standards, but it provides the best picture quality. Kin One also has support for multi-touch technology, it’s just inconvenient to scale pictures and pages with two fingers in the case of Kin One. Yes, and there is a "spread" is not smooth, but jerky. In general, a failure.
5. The phone has a receiver for satellite GPS navigation, but you cannot use it for navigation - only to add geotags to photos received by the built-in camera. The approach is strange, given that Microsoft has its own mapping service - Bing Maps. It is impossible to install any Google Maps or Yandex.Maps here, since there is no Java support in Kin phones and, apparently, will never be.
6. By the way, about the camera: a 5-megapixel autofocus module was allegedly released by Sony, but we can’t talk about the high quality of photos and videos (640x480 pixels, 30 frames per second). The LED flash “hits” very weakly, but it cannot be used as a flashlight (well, this is already a dream - far from all “normal” mobile phones have such a function). For comparison: in terms of picture quality, Kin One is easily “done” by the expensive Samsung S8500 Wave and the quite budget Philips Xenium X830. Compared with them, since a) these devices also have 5-megapixel cameras and b) they just fell into hand.
7. One of the main “tricks” of the Kin family phones is the Kin Studio service, which allows you to store photos, videos and other personal data in the “cloud”. To register in the service and get an account, you need to specify an email address and password, and then accept its terms. The corresponding offer is displayed every time you turn on the phone.
So, I didn’t manage to register. As it was found out, this requires an IP address Verizon Wireless. No other way. An interesting point. Initially, the device accepted the address and password, and when trying to agree to the conditions, it wrote something like this: “Kin servers are now overloaded, wait 15 minutes and try again.” After a couple of weeks, the phone began to report that it could not communicate with the servers at all, both via EV-DO and Wi-Fi. The situation is similar with updates that can be downloaded from the menu: earlier, Kin One said that there are no updates now, but now claims that it cannot “reach” the server. I got the impression that I was simply banned - so as not to go with my Ukrainian Kin One to where access was "ordered" anyway.
Finally, theoretically, the phone allows you to read RSS feeds and interact in some way with social services - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live. “In some way”, since I also failed to try these options in practice - the phone simply refuses to “log in”, offering to try to do this later. Although, it would seem, the tapes and social networks are in no way connected with Kin Studio.
8. The phone has a Bluetooth module, but - to be honest, I was not surprised - it does not allow sharing files and contacts. With it, you can connect headsets and wireless headphones (using the A2DP profile). I tried to listen to music using the Motorola S9, but I did not like the quality. Another thing is if you connect wired "ears". (Moreover, I’ll note that some of my own - complete ones are not impressive at all.) With headphones from the Sony NWZ-A728 player, the phone produces more than decent sound, at the level of the same Zune HD. But another nuance pops up here: if you want to download music, please install the Zune Software package. The phone is not detected as a removable disk. By the way, according to official figures, there are four gigabytes of internal memory in it, but in reality, three or more. There are no flash card slots. Good though
9. Separately, it should be said about the interface. On the one hand, the developers faced a very, very difficult task. Let me explain: the same Zune HD, which is a completely authentic product, is still regularly called the “iPod touch clone”. That is, any Microsoft product that has, albeit very conditional, but analogues in the Apple lineup, may run into accusations of "unoriginality." Therefore, the corporation could not and did not want to equip Kin phones with the usual "icon" matrix. What is the result? Frankly, then complete chaos. All these panels, buttons and sliding screens are not at all conducive to close acquaintance with the device, and if some kind of “kettle” touches Kin One in the Verizon salon, then it will most likely put the device aside and buy some Samsung.
The culture (let's call it that) of creating phone interfaces has been forming in the world for a decade and a half, and Microsoft decided in a couple of years - about as many “Kins” were being developed - to create their own direction from scratch. As a result - FAIL !!! I sincerely hope that in the case of the Windows Phone 7 operating system, developers will approach the interface more carefully.
10. I always choose ringtones for SMS messages and incoming calls from the standard ones, but Kin One in any case does not allow you to set any ringtone on your call. There are 15 pieces preinstalled, and all of them are very quiet and in general ... Say, not too pleasant to the middle ear. The approach is very strange, given the fact that Kin phones are positioned as true youth. Or do American teenagers not suffer from the “ringtone” disease characteristic of our children?
I do not regret that I laid out $ 250 for this device. Just because my collection of gadgets has replenished with another instance unique to our latitudes. However, using it in real life is almost impossible. Yes, it allows you to make and receive calls and can even act as a good music player, but this is clearly not enough for a modern phone. It would seem that there are so many big names - Microsoft, Sharp, nVidia, Sony, and so on and so forth - but the output nevertheless turned out to be a couple of rattles, which are difficult to compare not only with iPhone, but also with Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson products and even some Chinese who have been successfully producing mobile phones under the Philips and Alcatel brands for several years.
I liked the request posted by one of the owners of the Kin phone on the site of their technical support. The girl asked not to fool users, but simply to release firmware for Kin One and Kin Two in the fall with the Windows Phone 7 operating system. Like, in this case, the corporation will be able to somehow rehabilitate and sell at least a couple more tens of thousands of “Kins”. Well, the proposal is very interesting. It’s just that hardly anyone in Redmond will take him seriously: there is an opinion that they remember the Pink project there with a shudder. And there are all reasons ...
photo from the article in high resolution
Recently, a network acquaintance sent me his experience using Kin One, I think the Habrasociety will be interested to read about it.
Further - the author’s text without abbreviations. ( Caution - a lot of text !!! )
It is no secret that Microsoft’s Kin One and Kin Two mobile phones failed miserably in the US market: according to various “informed sources”, Verizon Wireless managed to sell from 500 to 10,000 copies of these models in the first six weeks of sales. Is it a lot or a little? Let’s put it this way: it’s not just a failure, but a whole disaster and the real “shame of the jungle”, because not one hundred million dollars have been invested in the development of devices. (Of course, it is hardly fair to compare Kina with the iPhone 4, and yet: the latter sold 1.7 million units in three days.)
It is for this reason that Microsoft announced that the “launch” of Kin one and Kin Two planned for the fall in Europe is canceled, while in the US they will be available for a while from Verizon Wireless. Meanwhile, the Kin development team will engage in bringing to mind the Windows Phone 7 operating system, which is now entrusted with all the "mobile" hopes of the corporation.
What does all this mean in practice? Existing versions of Kin One and Kin Two are designed for CDMA EV-DO networks, and modifications to the usual GSM / UMTS networks will not be released.
Well, now the time has come for one confession: on April 11 (the day of the announcement of Kin phones) I saw a photo of the Kin One model and suddenly realized: “I WANT!”. Yes, the device looks very unusual, and the “average user” is unlikely to buy it (which was proved by sales in the USA), but ... I generally like square and “egg-shaped” models with sliding keyboards: in the near future I will get a Motorola FlipOut, and The Nokia X5-1, announced at CommunicAsia 2010, attracted me too.
But back to Kin One. So, European sales of Kin phones have been canceled, but I still want to get hold of such a device for the collection. And not just get hold of it, but get a working copy - so that you can make calls, receive calls, visit web pages and so on and so forth. Since in Ukraine, where I live, there are several CDMA mobile phone operators with the same Verizon Wireless frequencies, the idea came up to order Kin One from the USA and try to connect with us.
Naturally, this approach also had a number of “pitfalls” - let’s say, I was not able to figure out in advance whether the Kin phones were “locked” to the Verizon Wireless network or not. There is no normal community of owners of these devices for obvious reasons, and, judging by the reviews in foreign online forums, nobody thought of using Kin One outside the United States.
Actually, I looked at the eBay online auction and found out that almost all “Kins” can be delivered to the buyer only in the United States. There was only one lot with Worldwide delivery, and the seller - by the way, my former compatriot - also did not know anything about the “lock”. Like, "the phone is disconnected from Verizon, it does not have a SIM card slot, and I can’t guarantee anything at all." Talking with our local sellers of phones for CDMA networks inspired a little more hope: according to them, the equipment of the American operator Sprint is almost always “locked up”, while modems and handsets from Verizon Wireless are most often suitable for use on other networks without unnecessary tricks. In general, I decided to take a chance. He transferred $ 250 to the Ukrainian American and five days later (yes, I was also surprised,
I’ll tell you about my impressions of the device below, and now about the epic with the connection to the Intertelecom operator. So, in the office of this company, Kin One was not particularly surprised - apparently, various kinds of exotic from the USA are brought to them regularly. They were not surprised to be surprised, but they could not connect the device to the network on the first attempt, and it was not at all their fault.
The fact is that Kin One is defined by the operating systems Windows XP, Vista and 7 simply as “Kin Portable Media Player”. That is, you can then launch the Zune Software package and upload a bunch of songs, pictures and videos to the phone’s memory, but they don’t see it at point blank range for downloading the PRL file with the settings of the operator of the program. This requires special drivers - Pink CDMA Diagnostic (Pink is the name of the project in which Kin One and Kin Two were created); in addition, to install them, you must enter the secret code and password (## 77647266488 and 000000, respectively) from the keyboard, and then change the PC connection mode to USB Pass-Through in the menu that appears. After that, the device will be designated as Pink CDMA Diagnostic in the application manager, the Windows operating system will try to find "firewood" and will not find anything, and you can substitute them yourself. So, we searched for these drivers on the Internet for more than a week. And they didn’t find anything.
I already took Kin One from Intertelecom’s office, deciding that it was his fate to lie on the shelf, recalling two and a half hundred spent in vain ... But a couple of days later, the KinPixiPreCentroTreo800w_etc_DiagDrivers.rar archive (52 kb) was uploaded to XDA-Developers.com . Allegedly, it contained all the drivers necessary for connecting in the “diagnostic” mode. Downloaded. I tried it. Does not work. That is, Windows scans the folder (three files with the * .inf extension and two with the * .sys extension) and reports that there are no correct drivers in it. Meanwhile, I noticed that the Device ids of the phone in the device manager of the operating system contains the value Vid_056C, and for some reason Vid_05C6 is written in drivers opened with Notepad with the extension * .inf. Corrected, saved. Earned! The drivers are installed and Kin One is displayed in the Ports Device Manager section (COM & LPT) as the [CAIN] Microsoft KIN Passthru Diag Port (COM1). Intertelecom engineers didn’t have any problems - the very next day, Kin One was connected. As it turned out, the phone was not locked on the Verizon Wireless network. I note that after a couple of weeks of operation, the device suddenly stopped loading web pages - that is, the ability to make and receive calls remained, but the Internet "lay". The problem was solved by reloading the PRL file in the operator’s office, although the sediment remained. Who knows - when will Kin One “die out” the next time? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Here I note that the phone can not be used as a modem for a PC. on the Verizon Wireless network the phone was not locked. I note that after a couple of weeks of operation, the device suddenly stopped loading web pages - that is, the ability to make and receive calls remained, but the Internet "lay". The problem was solved by reloading the PRL file in the operator’s office, although the sediment remained. Who knows - when will Kin One “die out” the next time? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Here I note that the phone can not be used as a modem for a PC. on the Verizon Wireless network the phone was not locked. I note that after a couple of weeks of operation, the device suddenly stopped loading web pages - that is, the ability to make and receive calls remained, but the Internet "lay". The problem was solved by reloading the PRL file in the operator’s office, although the sediment remained. Who knows - when will Kin One “die out” the next time? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Here I note that the phone can not be used as a modem for a PC.
Next, we give the ten most interesting, in my opinion, facts about Kin One. I think they’ll best talk about the nuances of using the phone and, possibly, even the reasons for its failure.
1. The Japanese company Sharp is engaged in assembling Kin phones (it also produced Danger SideKick phones, acquired by Microsoft in 2008), which is proudly written on their back panels. That's just the quality of this assembly itself can not be called high: the backlash of the halves does not just take place, but even annoys, and the battery cover does not hold very tightly. By the way, scuffs have already appeared on a pair of buttons, although the upper part of the phone does not seem to be in contact with the keyboard.
As for the materials, Kin One uses various plastics - the back is made of quickly getting dirty soft-touch, and the front is made of translucent smoky plastic. In general, if the same metal Zune HD leaves an impression of a cool quality thing, then Kin One is perceived as ... Let's say, like an inexpensive toy (most of all Kin One resembles "Tamagotchi"). Most likely, the developers decided to use plastic because of the mass of wireless modules: Qualcomm QSC6085 CDMA chipset, GPS receiver, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, as well as FM radio.
2. Kin phones are based on the first-generation nVidia Tegra “chip system”, which is also the basis for the Zune HD media player. That's just the interface of the latter works really very quickly and smoothly, and Kin One can be called a real "brake". For example, in order to go from the main menu to dialing, you need to wait a half seconds. Slowly almost all menu items and applications open, and the phone turns on very slowly.
3. Both the email client and the web browser display “hieroglyphs” instead of Cyrillic characters. The phone also does not understand messages with Russian letters - they arrive empty. If the text contained both Cyrillic and Latin letters, then the text will also be empty. After meeting the terrible Zune HD web browser last winter, I assumed that the Kin One browser in our realities would also behave badly, but it exceeded all expectations. The player normally displayed at least some Russian sites (approximately 1 out of 10), and Kin One is not even capable of this. In fairness, I note that the phone is intended only for the United States, so it’s not worth scolding him too much. Moreover, he "digests" the tags of MP3 files quite adequately - and there are no problems with the Cyrillic alphabet.
4. The 2.6-inch capacitive touch TFT-screen (240x320 pixels) was not impressive. Apparently, Kin One uses a very cheap matrix - in the sun it “fades”, and the color rendition is far from ideal. Say, the Sony Ericsson P1i has a display with the same parameters (perhaps only resistive), and it is also far from modern standards, but it provides the best picture quality. Kin One also has support for multi-touch technology, it’s just inconvenient to scale pictures and pages with two fingers in the case of Kin One. Yes, and there is a "spread" is not smooth, but jerky. In general, a failure.
5. The phone has a receiver for satellite GPS navigation, but you cannot use it for navigation - only to add geotags to photos received by the built-in camera. The approach is strange, given that Microsoft has its own mapping service - Bing Maps. It is impossible to install any Google Maps or Yandex.Maps here, since there is no Java support in Kin phones and, apparently, will never be.
6. By the way, about the camera: a 5-megapixel autofocus module was allegedly released by Sony, but we can’t talk about the high quality of photos and videos (640x480 pixels, 30 frames per second). The LED flash “hits” very weakly, but it cannot be used as a flashlight (well, this is already a dream - far from all “normal” mobile phones have such a function). For comparison: in terms of picture quality, Kin One is easily “done” by the expensive Samsung S8500 Wave and the quite budget Philips Xenium X830. Compared with them, since a) these devices also have 5-megapixel cameras and b) they just fell into hand.
7. One of the main “tricks” of the Kin family phones is the Kin Studio service, which allows you to store photos, videos and other personal data in the “cloud”. To register in the service and get an account, you need to specify an email address and password, and then accept its terms. The corresponding offer is displayed every time you turn on the phone.
So, I didn’t manage to register. As it was found out, this requires an IP address Verizon Wireless. No other way. An interesting point. Initially, the device accepted the address and password, and when trying to agree to the conditions, it wrote something like this: “Kin servers are now overloaded, wait 15 minutes and try again.” After a couple of weeks, the phone began to report that it could not communicate with the servers at all, both via EV-DO and Wi-Fi. The situation is similar with updates that can be downloaded from the menu: earlier, Kin One said that there are no updates now, but now claims that it cannot “reach” the server. I got the impression that I was simply banned - so as not to go with my Ukrainian Kin One to where access was "ordered" anyway.
Finally, theoretically, the phone allows you to read RSS feeds and interact in some way with social services - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live. “In some way”, since I also failed to try these options in practice - the phone simply refuses to “log in”, offering to try to do this later. Although, it would seem, the tapes and social networks are in no way connected with Kin Studio.
8. The phone has a Bluetooth module, but - to be honest, I was not surprised - it does not allow sharing files and contacts. With it, you can connect headsets and wireless headphones (using the A2DP profile). I tried to listen to music using the Motorola S9, but I did not like the quality. Another thing is if you connect wired "ears". (Moreover, I’ll note that some of my own - complete ones are not impressive at all.) With headphones from the Sony NWZ-A728 player, the phone produces more than decent sound, at the level of the same Zune HD. But another nuance pops up here: if you want to download music, please install the Zune Software package. The phone is not detected as a removable disk. By the way, according to official figures, there are four gigabytes of internal memory in it, but in reality, three or more. There are no flash card slots. Good though
9. Separately, it should be said about the interface. On the one hand, the developers faced a very, very difficult task. Let me explain: the same Zune HD, which is a completely authentic product, is still regularly called the “iPod touch clone”. That is, any Microsoft product that has, albeit very conditional, but analogues in the Apple lineup, may run into accusations of "unoriginality." Therefore, the corporation could not and did not want to equip Kin phones with the usual "icon" matrix. What is the result? Frankly, then complete chaos. All these panels, buttons and sliding screens are not at all conducive to close acquaintance with the device, and if some kind of “kettle” touches Kin One in the Verizon salon, then it will most likely put the device aside and buy some Samsung.
The culture (let's call it that) of creating phone interfaces has been forming in the world for a decade and a half, and Microsoft decided in a couple of years - about as many “Kins” were being developed - to create their own direction from scratch. As a result - FAIL !!! I sincerely hope that in the case of the Windows Phone 7 operating system, developers will approach the interface more carefully.
10. I always choose ringtones for SMS messages and incoming calls from the standard ones, but Kin One in any case does not allow you to set any ringtone on your call. There are 15 pieces preinstalled, and all of them are very quiet and in general ... Say, not too pleasant to the middle ear. The approach is very strange, given the fact that Kin phones are positioned as true youth. Or do American teenagers not suffer from the “ringtone” disease characteristic of our children?
I do not regret that I laid out $ 250 for this device. Just because my collection of gadgets has replenished with another instance unique to our latitudes. However, using it in real life is almost impossible. Yes, it allows you to make and receive calls and can even act as a good music player, but this is clearly not enough for a modern phone. It would seem that there are so many big names - Microsoft, Sharp, nVidia, Sony, and so on and so forth - but the output nevertheless turned out to be a couple of rattles, which are difficult to compare not only with iPhone, but also with Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson products and even some Chinese who have been successfully producing mobile phones under the Philips and Alcatel brands for several years.
I liked the request posted by one of the owners of the Kin phone on the site of their technical support. The girl asked not to fool users, but simply to release firmware for Kin One and Kin Two in the fall with the Windows Phone 7 operating system. Like, in this case, the corporation will be able to somehow rehabilitate and sell at least a couple more tens of thousands of “Kins”. Well, the proposal is very interesting. It’s just that hardly anyone in Redmond will take him seriously: there is an opinion that they remember the Pink project there with a shudder. And there are all reasons ...
photo from the article in high resolution