Microsoft’s New Kin Phones Aimed at Consumers who Text More than Talk


“Microsoft has officially unveiled their latest, but perhaps not their greatest, gadget and service. The Kin One and Kin Two mark the Redmond-based company’s full emergence into the cloud-based services, as both handsets function perfectly in that area. Your photos are trickled into the ethereal space, so that your phone’s limited on board storage isn’t filled up too quickly. You’ve also got the Kin Studio, which puts all of your phone’s features right there on a desktop client. Microsoft has made sure that the Kin devices market to one particular demographic, and we’re pretty sure they’ve hit that nail right on the head. But, let’s take a further look at the hands-on, make sure we’ve covered all the bases.We’ll start with the Kin One, for obvious reasons. First and foremost, the interesting form factor. It’s obviously not like any other device out there, at least not so much from an aesthetic approach. Some would say it looks similar to the Palm Pre, if not a bit squashed, but we have to give it to heads at Microsoft for making a device that is, indeed, unique to their own brand. You are able to hold it in one hand and type on the full QWERTY keyboard, and that’s obviously the point behind the Turtle, or Kin One if you like the official title. The screen is a QVGA, and it’s pretty bright. It’s not that big, but as you can see from the images, Loop and all those tiles fit well enough into it. Though, we’ve got to admit, it’s super packed.And then there’s the Kin Two. Right off the bat, you notice that this is a far more traditional, if not out-right boring looking device. It has the traditional slide, unlike the One’s slight curve to it, and it’s got an expansive QWERTY keyboard. Also unlike the One’s optimized one handed approach, the Pure is better suited for two hand usage. The screen is bigger than the One’s as well, but it’s just as bright. With the bigger screen you will get a better experience on the whole, as there’s more room to look at the Loop, along with browsing the Web, and messaging your friends.” Read more here:

HTC or Lenovo May Buy Palm

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“In the face of lackluster sales of its latest smartphones, Palm, Inc. is supposedly looking to be acquired by a larger company. Palm has been fiercely independent for many years, but reportedly has decided that it can’t go it alone any more.An unconfirmed report indicates that this company has turned to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Qatalyst Partners for help in buying a partner. HTC and Lenovo are allegedly interested, and Nokia is also rumored to be looking at Palm. Dell supposedly considered making an offer, but decided not to.In the 1990s, Palm was the dominant company in the PDA market, even in the face of tough competition from Microsoft. Much of this dominance slipped away as consumer interest turned from PDAs to smartphones, but Palm sold many millions of Treos in the middle of the decade.But the Palm OS, the software the company used on all its products, stagnated for many years, and sales dropped off.Last year, the company introduced the webOS, and suddenly it seemed the magic was back. This new operating system garnered generally positive reviews, but the hoped for rush of new customers didn’t emerge. In February of this year, Palm had to admit that the webOS isn’t catching on as fast as it had predicted.Much of Palm’s woes can be credited to tough competition from rivals like the Google’s Android OS, Apple’s iPhone, and the BlackBerry OS. As a result, sales of the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi have been anemic.”via brighthand.com