Microsoft's KIN: A Eulogy
by Brian Klug on July 13, 2010 3:42 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- KIN
- Mobile
Microsoft's Turn in the Clouds
It's clear now that the real reason Microsoft acquired Danger was for their hugely cloud centric platform and IP manifested in the Hiptops. While the rest of the KIN platform felt relatively premature, its reliance on online services for not only bringing media down from the cloud, but also pushing it back up, was the device's almost perfectly executed redeeming feature.
To start, the KIN are tightly integrated into Windows Live. At setup, users were prompted to create or login with a Windows Live account. This Live account is then what tied phone to the KIN studio, the web interface through which one could manage nearly all data on the phone. Moving along through that initial setup wizard, users were prompted to login with Faceboook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts. The KIN called these social networks 'feeds' and immediately pulled down data from them while setup completed. Data from these feeds populates tiles on the homescreen and contacts. Microsoft calls all this social data that gets aggregated together the KIN Loop - a mashup of status updates, news, and tweets from those feeds.
Up at the top is your name, Twitter avatar (which seems to take precedence over your Facebook avatar) and your latest Twitter or Facebook status. Tap on that, and you can push out an update to all the social networks you're connected to, or ones you choose. This is text only - no photos, videos, or anything else. In fact, this is really the primary way to publishing data to social networks from the KIN. Other media gets pushed out through the KIN spot, more on that later.
Avatars from Facebook come in and populate the loop, however avatars from Twitter inexplicably don't. The result is that you're occasionally left with a home screen full of grey shadow placeholders when your Twitter following out-updates your suspiciously silent, likely hungover Facebook friends. I don't have a MySpace account, though I'd hope that feed would bring in avatars lest Microsoft let the loop look even more sparse.
When Twitter dominates, all you get are grey shadow avatars. It's ominous and garrish.
The KINs signed you up by default to a number of Microsoft feeds which were occasionally funny and sometimes surprisingly useful. The feeds themselves are RSS. You could add other RSS feeds and make them appear in the Loop, though there's a good chance you'd still want to read things manually in the Feed Reader application.
Feeds - this is where you go to read things manually
There's a major 'but' coming here though. The loop concept itself was the ultimate in glanceable information. It was always there, and always updating without any user interaction. It's what you see when you unlock the phone, and it's front and center to the platform. If you've got a good data connection, it would stay fresh as you used the device. But the ultimate problem with the loop was that there was no ability to change the feed update frequency - it's a fixed 15 minutes. You can manually refresh the feeds from within the 'Feed Reader' application in the apps screen, but who wants to do that? In addition, I encountered numerous timeouts trying to update my Twitter feed manually, eventually giving up and letting it update itself on that 15 minute schedule. The end result is that I found myself often staring at stale data and getting tired of it quickly.
Microsoft's rationale is likely that higher frequency updates would kill battery life or go over API rate limits for the social networks - they've got a decent argument, but 15 minutes is about 15 minutes too long for "generation upload." Pulling down text and tiny avatars isn't that much data at all either - so there's no rationale to the argument that this is done to make the KINs sip data. Especially considering the rest of the cloud integration I'm getting to.
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Belard - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
MS Mobile was always... garbage. It did some NEAT things, badly. Nothing more.Everyone I know who used WindowsMobile or Blackberrys quickly went to iPhone when the iPhone came out and haven't looked back.
Of course, Apple is screwed up with their attitude issues with the lated iPhone4. Bad design flaw.
aebiv - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
What did it do badly?And I've found the opposite, a lot who went to the iPhone and BB were annoyed at the lack of applications and flexibility in the platforms,so they went back to WinMo
strikeback03 - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
I think it says something when the best feature of an OS is that it allows other stuff to be installed over it.Really, most people don't want to spend the extra money on a bunch of software just to get the OS to a functional state. And it still feels like what it is - a hacked together assembly of programs that have an uneasy truce amongst each other. Unless you need some of the enterprise integration available, there is no way I could recommend a WM 6.x phone to anyone.
aebiv - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link
And in the same line of thinking as that, calling the iPhone a smartphone is a joke. It is a glorified, and admittedly very well done top end feature phone.kmmatney - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link
Fist of all, saying the iPhone is not a smartphone is assinine. Second - Look at the scoreboard - WinMo 6 phones are losing ground for a very good reason - they just aren't as nice to use as the iPhone or Android. The battle has already been lostaebiv - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link
Really? Was the first gen a smartphone? It couldn't even send MMS messages or multitask at all. My old dumb phones did more than it did.What have we added? Apps? Great... what does that do for me again? Can I do network packet sniffing? Can I use it as an IR remote for TV's and devices?
I can't plug anything into the iPhone through USB host either on an iPhone.
It is NOT a smartphone, it is a glorified, overpriced feature phone. The sad thing is, WP7 and Android 3.0 are heading down the same path.
Commodus - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link
Actually, you can use it as a remote. You need an adapter with a custom app, but it can be done.The iPhone is very much a smartphone. Just ask the enterprises using sales apps and juggling Exchange data. Ask the people using it as part of home automation systems.
Yes, Apple could stand to loosen its app guidelines, but the very definition of a smartphone is one that focuses heavily on functions beyond making calls and receiving text messages, especially if it has robust apps. If anything, Windows Mobile is feeling less and less like a smartphone OS every day, as there are far fewer apps for it now than iOS (and likely Android too) and a narrower range.
It's no longer 2002. We'd like you to join us in an era where you don't need a stylus to make up for bad UIs and bad touchscreens, where you're allowed to have fun on your phone, and where the web is an important part of life, not an afterthought (as it clearly is with Internet Explorer Mobile).
aebiv - Sunday, July 18, 2010 - link
Yes, we're improving the UI, that is for certain.However, there are somethings such as RDP and signatures that will never be "finger friendly" so why are we in such a rush to be complete rid of the stylus?
The iPhone has had exchange issues both in synchronization with the latest phone, and with the first couple generations in "faking" the security policy enforcement for exchange.
Can I push out apps and security policies to an iPhone from a central location? No. Can I use it as a messaging device? By all means.
Yes, Apple has a lot of apps out there, but so many of them are worthless IMHO, Android is doing a bit better with that I'll admit, but they still don't have a great GPS application.
I don't understand how you mean there are far fewer apps for WinMo, as virtually all the old ones still work and are still around, and new ones are still being made. One only has to look at Omarket or the XDA application to see all the new apps out for it.
Question though, the iPhone still doesn't allow for network diag tools like packet capture and such right?
nangryo - Sunday, July 18, 2010 - link
That's why you need to wake up and get out of your distorted reality dream ok.aebiv - Sunday, July 18, 2010 - link
Why do you hate someone who has different needs for a mobile phone OS so much?Are you really that insecure that everyone has to use what you use?