Microsoft's Kin Phones: Super Social and Super Confusing

Microsoft's new Kin phones are attractive handsets that, as far as I can tell, move the bar forward on smart social network interaction and data storage. Unfortunately, they also seem somewhat out of step with market needs, the competition, and Microsoft's own .

Last year, Microsoft upgraded Windows Mobile to Windows 6.5. Just a few months later, the company unveiled the overhauled Windows Phone 7. Now, Microsoft has introduced a fork in its already confusing mobile plans—one that leads to a closed phone with very specific market goals. Not since the Sidekick have I seen a phone designed so aggressively for the 18-to-25 demographic. That's no coincidence since Microsoft developed this phone platform with the Sidekick maker Danger, which it acquired in 2008.

Honestly, there is some great stuff in Microsoft's Kin plan. I love the idea of the Kin Studio, a Web interface that doesn't even live on the phone. It's essentially your desktop interface for everything you're doing and have done on the Kin. It even has a timeline, so you can scroll back through time to see what you were doing (excluding e-mail) a day, week or month ago. Kin actually uses the cloud in other smart ways, such as auto-uploading photos to an all-you-can-eat, cloud-based storage center. It'll do this for video, too, but not the 720p HD video the Kin Two is capable of shooting.

I think every phone should have a Kin Studio. We all trade up phones so often—and lose others—that it makes no sense for our critical data to be stored locally. I'm also impressed that Kin Studio lets you interact with the Studio interface as if it were your phone. This means you can continue the social interaction on the desktop or the phone. Again, smart.

Windows Phone 7 doesn't have anything like this. During the press event, Microsoft tried to differentiate the two phone platforms by saying that Windows Phone 7 is a "multi-purpose phone" for a "broad set of users." Turn that around and it sounds like Microsoft just called the Kin a single-purpose phone for a very small set of users. I know that isn't what Microsoft meant, but the fact that Microsoft's President for its Entertainment & Devices Division, Robbie Bach, has to explain the existence of this new Microsoft phone in this way is a clear indication that the company is struggling to define its current mobile phone market strategy.

Later in the unveiling, I pressed Microsoft execs on the platform differences. I noticed that they said Kin and Windows Phone 7 were "created from the same design and same core elements." That surprised me since I had always understood that the PINK project (the code name for Kin) was on a different track than both the old Windows Mobile OS and the new Windows Phone 7. Another Microsoft exec even said that Kin and Windows Phone 7 shared the same kernel—until Microsoft marketing lead Greg Sullivan quickly corrected him. The Kin and Windows Phone 7 "share a common heritage," he told me, but the kernel is not the same. I likened it to two people from the same town but not the same house.

That said, there are similarities between Windows Phone 7 devices, which will ship in the fall, and the two Kin models (one a slab slider phone and the other a palm-sized Pre doppelganger). All have touch screens, and the larger Kin even offers an accelerometer. Too bad you won't get to use it for much besides changing the aspect ratio of your images and slipping into wide-screen texting mode. Kin phones won't access Microsoft's Marketplace. Whatever is on the phone is what you get. No downloading apps. No games. One of my Twitter followers called the Kin One and Two "feature phones," which is a little like saying that they're filled with liver. It makes them sound yucky.

However, for Microsoft's target audience, this sort of close controlled, yet super-social phone, may be just the communication platform your typical 18-to-25 year old desires.

On the other hand, Motorola's tried something similar with MotoBlur, and I have yet to see that social networking platform in the wild. Most 18-to-25 year olds I know are, as Microsoft recognized, highly-connected people who love to, using a Microsoft term, "lifecast" on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare. Kin gets them there and even adds tools to help them communicate with their BFFs first (Kin Loop). The problem is that those same millennials also crave customization. They want their devices to be what they want them to be—not someone else's idea of cool. They want to decide how they interact in the social space and, more importantly, how they spend their free time—which is the time between posts. For them, the Kin will be a disappointment. Yes, they can choose from among four themes, but they can't add apps. Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are all baked in—as is Zune and a good-looking Web browser—but there's no instant messaging and you can't add a client. Worst of all, there are no games.

If you want a customizable Microsoft phone, then you have to wait for Windows Phone 7 to arrive in the fall. If you want a Windows Phone 7 device that also integrates all the cool social things Kin can do and gives you the innovative desktop-based Kin Studio, then you have to wait until Microsoft figures out how to resolve its new forked mobile strategy.