Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two

Microsoft's Dynamic Duo Make Social Media More Mobile

Verizon's newest phones, the Microsoft-designed and Sharp-manufactured Kin One and Kin Two, put social media front and center.

More capable than cheap, feature-sparse dumbphones, but quite a few IQ points shy of being true smartphones, the Kins are the latest entrants in a new space where traditional phone features are almost an afterthought, and it's all about the Twitter and Facebook updates.

Palm's Web OS, Motorola's Blur interface, and other Android-based phone operating systems have been doing this kind of social media integration for more than a year. Kin just takes that idea and improves on it.

On the home screen (what Microsoft calls the Loop), a pleasingly formatted stack of randomly sized squares shows the latest updates from your networks. Your friends' avatars are shown large, filling the background of each text update, making the Loop into a photo album as well as news feed. It's hard to look at it without smiling.

Flick the touchscreen to the left to reveal your favorite contacts, swipe the other way to access a vertical stack of applications (text messaging, phone calls, web browsing, music and more.) A camera button activates a still/video camera function, and a Back button on the phone's face takes you back to whatever screen you were looking at before. And that's about it: The phone's interface is amazingly uncluttered, friendly looking and minimalist.

The system still has some glitches to work out. As a Twitter client, it's only half baked, since you can't view @ replies, search or post photos. Similarly, Facebook features are limited to showing or posting status updates, though you can post photos. The phone will easily connect with a Gmail account to display your e-mail, but won't let you access your Gmail contacts. Hotmail or Windows Live user? You're in luck, the Kin is well-integrated with those services.

YouTube videos won't play at all on the Kin, there's no map application, and even though the "Bing Near Me" search button helps find nearby restaurants and cafes, it relies on a browser interface, not a map: Clunky.

Overall, the Kin OS is promising, entertaining and — despite some obvious glitches — fairly well-suited to its target audience of social media addicts: in other words, tweens. How does the hardware stack up? Read on.

Kin One

The smaller of the two, the Kin One is a petite, rounded square of plastic with a tiny screen and a keyboard that slides out from underneath. It's almost impossibly cute and surprisingly functional for a phone that could easily be mistaken for a compact.

The touchscreen is just 1.5 inches tall by 2 inches wide, but its resolution (240 x 320 pixels) is up to the task of displaying your slice of the digital world — at least, that part of it that is posted in 160 characters or less.

A 5-megapixel camera (with a tiny LED light for illumination) takes OK pictures, though it had some trouble focusing on closeup objects in our tests.

The keyboard, though puny, is surprisingly easy to use. One mystery: The bottom, keyboard part of the phone's body protrudes a half-centimeter beyond the screen portion on the bottom and the top edges of the phone. Why the designers didn't just make the screen a little larger and go for a perfectly flush look is a puzzler.

The company claims its batteries will last for more than eight days on standby, and in our tests, it was about exhausted after a full day of heavy use.

For $50 with a two-year contract, the Kin One has a temptingly small sticker price, but don't be fooled: The contract demands a minimum of $70 per month for voice and data service, which means your total cost will be at least $3,410. That's a steep price for keeping your kids up-to-date with the latest on Facebook and Twitter.

But if all you want is a tiny, compact social communications device, and you've got a deep pocketbook, the Kin One is an adorable choice. We're looking forward to seeing more phones like it.

WIRED Super pocket-friendly size and weight (4.1 ounces). Cute as a button. Surprisingly usable keyboard. Built-in FM tuner. Extremely responsive touchscreen.

TIRED Screen too small for much reading or web browsing. Autofocus problems, especially on closeups. Video recording is only standard definition. Doesn't integrate with Google contacts or calendar. Limited Twitter capabilities.

$50 (after $100 mail-in rebate, with 2-year contract)

Kin Two

The Kin Two, with its 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel display, isn't particularly innovative in its design or features. It does what Microsoft is known for best: Come into the game late and copy an idea well enough to make it cheaper and sometimes, just sometimes a little better.

When it comes to the hardware, the Kin Two proves you get what you pay for. The run-of-the-mill design feels cheap. The 4.8-ounce phone doesn't have a solid body, the plastic casing is flimsy and the keys on the slide-out QWERTY keyboard aren't soft or easy to peck on.

But what the phone lacks in looks, it does make up in technical artillery. The Nvidia Tegra processor is zippy, the touchscreen is smooth and the 8-megapixel camera, with an LED flash, delivers some good photos in low light. Unlike the Kin One, it can shoot HD video.

With a larger body comes more screen real estate and a larger keyboard, and that makes the Kin Two potentially more powerful than its little sister. The lack of an onscreen keyboard is a surprising omission, leaving you with no alternative but to flip the phone to the landscape mode if you want to type anything.

Overall, the Kin Two lacks the panache of the tiny, squarish Kin One, however, and invites comparison with smarter phones in the same form factor, like Motorola's Devour, Backflip and Droid, and Samsung's Behold II.

Like the Kin One, the Kin Two requires a two-year voice and data contract with a $70 per month minimum, bringing its total cost to $3,460. Unless you're some sort of iced out playa ballin' out of control, you're better off buying your progeny a feature phone and making them use SMS like all the other kids.

WIRED Free and automatic browser-based phone backup. Easy sharing of photos, videos and web pages.

TIRED Lack of apps and games. No easy way to access maps. El cheap-o design. No calendar or alarm. No onscreen keyboard.

$100 (after $100 mail-in rebate, with 2-year contract)