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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brokensoul - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link
One thing people seem to forget (too...), is the constant sync on android devices with your google services (mails, talk,...), along for most devices with a sync with facebook, flickr and twitter. The iPhone doesn't come close to that (even with the last iOS4), and WM is a laugh in that perspective. Deactivate those syncing (or slow them down), and android devices last much longer, easily one day and a half for my legend.notposting - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
The Motorola Devour had that Sidekick form factor as well, really liked it quite a bit.I had it for about a month and a half...the keyboard on it, the general build quality, most everything about it was phenomenal, except for:
the shitty camera--3MP supposedly, no flash, no auto-focus, just crap.
lousy reception--the reason I traded it in for a Droid
of course it still hasn't been rooted (or updated past 1.6) so that's pretty disappointing as well. And it looks like Motorola is hellbent on locking down their new phones to completely take the mod/hack/customizing communities out of play.
mcnabney - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
The metal case and internal antenna really hurt the Devour. Running a slow chip and old Android OS didn't help either.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
Android has captured the market for "open" phones (i.e.: open app store, etc.). Apple has the fanboy and zealot market cornered. I can't see very many people choosing WP7 over either of those two.FATCamaro - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
The arstechnica article from a week or two ago is far better on the topic. This article is written from a fanboy perspective and ignores reality completely. The reality of MS essentially killing Danger after buying them for a few hundred million.Stuka87 - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
I had the same feeling. This article is missing a lot of details, which isn't the norm for this site.strikeback03 - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
What, a fanboi of a disappearing OS? I personally didn't feel all the internal microsoft bickering had to be included here (it is documented elsewhere) and instead this article was written from a perspective of "Is there anything positive to pull out of this?" And I thought it did that well instead of focusing on the specifics of the phones as not many will be buying them anyway.inspire - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link
So an article about the phone and its features, pros, and cons, but sans-drama is fanboyish? Ars always finds a way to inject drama. All their self-righteous treaties on the ethics of video game reviews, and such.The article is titled 'a eulogy'. If you want the TMZ version - stick with Ars.
s1ugh34d - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
WinMo really does take all those points, and put them in a more business approached user interface, while taking notes from classic IT user requirements.My TyTn II definitely does everything the KIN, iOS, WebOS, and android phones can, just it's been able to since before them...
Now I can't say it has the flare, GUI or app style. The Microsoft app store is the worst software I ever thought to install. The graphics are something HTC has been holding back forever. Otherwise functionality speaking, I can do anything you can do, just it may take me a day to figure it out.
What it comes down to is what YOU do. I read about 75 RSS feeds daily(long commute.) I also listen to Pandora the whole time. Meanwhile between my feed reader, the browser or browsers I may be running, Pandora, and typically word/excel/foxit, I still make it 5-8 hours constant usage(which translates into a day adding in time I actually have to do stuff IRL) oh and Wifi is on for at least three of those hours.
I upload pictures directly after taking them via email, which is one click from the after-shot menu. Facebook conveniently is on my homescreen(I don't use the other sites so much) as well as my favorite feature, contacts stay as is, until I open them click, the Facebook link, and from the UI I can pick any info I want synced.
Wifi syncing on Activesuck, works(only because there isn't any good open source alternative.) and Google sync keeps my online calendar up to date with stuff I have to do, as well as backs up my contacts. Since I don't text(yea smartphone user so long I've replaced SMS with POP...)backing up messages is my gmail. Plus my backup for microSD is Wifi at home(yea networking try that iOS and android playaz) When I connect to my network, bam my SD is ghosted(as real files) and sync occurs with my file server.
I like the KIN's web app. I really hope that transfers into the WP7 features. Danger definitely had something going for them, hope M$ uses a few hint from there world. The Dell mini 5 is on my next list, but the HD2 is my very next.
Darth_Bob - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
I would have to agree to a certain point. I have a LG Incite, Winmo 6.1. I havent seen enough from Android or iOS to switch yet. Ive been multi-tasking for well over a year, can go 2 days without charging with moderate use. I can VPN to my home network via Hamachi, use remote desktop to connect to any computer on the network.Have had SPB Mobile Shell since 3.0.1, recently updated to 3.5.5 - great features, totally customizable UI.
WinMo was really great for the IT/professional aspect, but not so great for the average consumer aspect - which is where the money is.
Although I have AT&T, that HD2 is next on my list as well, as soon as my contract is up (shortly).
As for the KIN, they were aiming for a demographic already covered. Im surprised someone OK'd the release.