Apple Iphone 3gs

The smart phone market has surely grown a lot over the past few years. Each years we seem to find something different in the smart phone arena. The all new Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two are the latest phones to hit the smart phone market. They are available through the Verizon network. To get a foothold in the smart phone market is difficult as it is dominated by smart phones like the Apple iPhone 3gs, the Google Nexus One and the HTC EVO. Let’s see how these two phones from Verizon match up against its competitors.

April 10^th 2010 was the day these two phones were unveiled by Microsoft. Make no mistake these are two uniquely designed phones. The Kin One has got to be the cutest looking phone out there. The Kin One has got to be the first square cell phone I have seen. Both these phones have QWERTY keyboards which is a good thing. Due to the design of the Kin One it features a 2.6-inch QVGA capacitive touch screen. This screen gets pretty cramped when you reach the Loop home screen which contains loads of info. Both the Kin One and the Kin Two feature an ambient light sensor that will automatically adjust the screen’s brightness depending on the environment which is similar to the one on the Apple IPhone. The brightness of the screen of both the phones is good but then viewing stuff on your phone in sunlight can get difficult. The Kin One has 4 GB of memory and the Kin Two comes with 8 GB. The multimedia display of both the phones is decent but then they come nowhere near the 3.5 inch screen of the iPhone 3gs. There aren’t many accessories available for the Kin One and the Kin Two compared to the large number of iPhone accessories.

The user interface is what everyone was looking at. Both the Kin One and Two share the same user interface. This interface was designed around the Windows phone 7 but then this interface is completely designed around social networking and communication. With the Loop home screen at the center of it all. Loop displays all your contacts’ updates and tweets from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Windows Live (like I said totally designed towards social networking), and will also pull in any content from your subscribed news feeds. The Kin One and Kin Two have a unique feature called the spot. With this feature you can drag and drop content and then add contacts with whom you want to share the information with via text/MMS or e-mail. You can share anything from the Loop screen, as well as web pages. This was a pretty innovative and cool feature to have on your phone. Overall the interface is fun to use and goes well with the reasonably responsive touch interface.

Now the question arises if it comes anywhere close to its present competitors such as the iPhone 3Gs or the Nexus one. It would be unfair to compare these phones as Microsoft had announced that these phones were targeted towards the younger generation who were into social networking. But then the overall contract price that Verizon’s two year contract offers is a lot and makes you think twice before buying this phone

Guest Blogger: Anil