MicrosoftKin Archive

  • Best Buy now offering Kin One free, Kin Two for $50 on contract

    Best Buy now offering Kin One free, Kin Two for $50 on contract

    For all its faults, the prime reason we panned Microsoft's Kin was price. Why buy a Kin when you could get a more capable iPhone, Palm Pre or Android device for the same price? This week, it seems someone at Best Buy HQ has seen the light. As of today, the brick-and-mortar electronics superstore has knocked $50 off the price of both handsets, making the Kin One free and the Kin Two cost only $50 on a two-year contract, with no mail-in rebates or other nonsense required. Now, if only Verizon would do something about that $30 monthly data plan, your teen might finally have a vaguely compelling reason to pick one up.

    [Thanks, Sean T.]

    Best Buy now offering Kin One free, Kin Two for $50 on contract originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 23:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Kin Media Sync for Mac syncs Kin media with Mac

    Kin Media Sync for Mac syncs Kin media with Mac

    Sync music, sync photos, sync too much money into a mediocre phone. Now that we've gotten the amateur comedy hour out of the way, it's time to bring you the news that Kins and Macs will henceforth play very nicely together thanks to the just released Media Sync software from Mark/Space. Chosen by Microsoft as the exclusive provider of Mac syncing capabilities for Kin, the company is offering iTunes and iPhoto integration, whereby you'll able to transfer playlists and image albums both to and from your Kin device, as well as a neat transcoding feature to make videos playable on it. The software's free and can be found at the source link below, while the press announcement awaits after the break.

    Continue reading Kin Media Sync for Mac syncs Kin media with Mac

    Kin Media Sync for Mac syncs Kin media with Mac originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 May 2010 03:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Microsoft Kin One and Two review

    Microsoft Kin One and Two review

    Make no mistake: the Kin One and Two are coming into the world as the black sheep of the phone industry, and Microsoft would have it no other way. Straddling the fence somewhere between a dedicated smartphone and high-spec featurephone, they've been tricky to understand since the day they were first leaked (even Microsoft seemed unsure of what the devices meant until very recently). Billed as a Gen-Y (the "upload generation") social networking tool -- and sold in advertisements as the gateway to the time of your young, freewheeling life -- the Kin phones have admittedly been something of head-scratcher to those of us in the gadget world. Built atop a core similar (but not identical) to the Windows Phone 7 devices coming later this year, manufactured by Sharp, and tied into partnerships with Verizon and Vodafone, the phones dangerously preempt Microsoft's reemergence into the smartphone market. Hell, they're even called Windows Phones. But the One and Two aren't like any Windows Phones you've ever seen. With stripped-down interfaces, deep social networking integration, and a focus on very particular type of user, Microsoft is aiming for something altogether different with Kin. So do these devices deliver on that unique, social experience that Redmond has been selling, or does this experiment fall flat? We've taken both handsets for a spin, and we've got all the answers in our full review... so read on to find out!

    Continue reading Microsoft Kin One and Two review

    Microsoft Kin One and Two review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 May 2010 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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