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Microsoft Unveils its New Windows Phone, Social KIN

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Microsoft in cooperation with Sharp, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone has officially announced the new Windows Phone called KIN. Microsoft calls KIN as a new mobile device banking heavily on social networking features – the Loop, Spot and Studio. Manufactured by Sharp Corporation, Microsoft KIN will be exclusively distributed by Verizon Wireless in the U.S. starting in May and Vodafone in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom starting this autumn.

To be available in two models simply called KIN ONE and KIN TWO, both of these Windows phones feature touch screen display and slide-out keyboard. The KIN  TWO also features a larger screen and keyboard and a 8 megapixel camera. While the KIN ONE  features a 5 megapixel camera. Both cameras boast image stabilization and LumiLED flash.

As a social phone Microsoft KIN automatically brings together feeds from leading Microsoft and third-party services including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The phone also allows you to select your favorite contacts who will given priorities for status updates, messages, feeds and photos when displayed on the phone’s “always-on”  home screen called the KIN Loop.

Aside from these the phone also features the KIN Spot which allows you to focus first on people and the stuff they want to share rather than the specific application you want to use.  It allows you to easily share videos, photos, text messages, web pages, location and status updates by simply dragging them into a single place on the KIN’s spot.

Another interesting feature of the phone is KIN Studio which automatically backs up text, call history, photos, videos and contacts in the cloud. KIN Studio gives you tons of storage space on Microsoft servers, hence you’d have more space in your phone’s storage.

Finally, Microsoft KIN will integrate Microsoft’s Zune interface for music, video, FM radio and podcast playback as well as access to Zune Marketplace.

So there. Microsoft has officially rejoined the smartphone arena with these two social phones. The question is – are you interested at all? Will this recapture Microsoft’s lost glory in the smartphone market?

Originally posted on April 12, 2010 @ 3:42 pm

Class Action Suit filed against Windows Mobile Phone 7 for Location Tracking Feature

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A class action suit is likely being readied against Microsoft by consumers alleging that the software giant’s Windows Phone 7 operating system tracks the locations of phone owners without asking for consent.

A woman from Michigan has filed the likely class action lawsuit in a Seattle District Court. She claims that Windows Mobile Phone 7 gathers user data from owners of the phone, and continue to do this even if the owners have already opted out of the location-reporting feature. An equally damaging allegation is that Microsoft did not tell the truth to Congress about how much data from location information the device collects.

According to the suit, the location logging feature incorporated into Windows Mobile Phone 7 gets location and network information data directly from the device in order to build a map of WiFi hotspots, cell towers and other related data that can be employed for assisted GPS. The suit further alleges that the information gathered is not just to give phone owners a thorough location-based service but also to create a targeted marketing system that can personalized the ads that are sent to a user’s particular location.

Microsoft, which is expected to fight the class action suit, has assured the public and the US Congress before that data gathering feature will only work if the user has permitted an application to get location services. The company further clarified that the application only gathers location data and nothing else.

Both Android and iOS devices were also accused of getting location data without permission from users but these were eventually fixed in subsequent updates.

Image credit: technologyrekor.eu

Originally posted on September 2, 2011 @ 3:40 pm