Microsoft is not content to depend on its partners to serve up an iPhone alternative for users.  Instead, Microsoft has decided to announce one directly.  Rather than try to be all things to all people, the Microsoft Kin smartphone is aimed squarely at the kids and teens who, at the moment, depends on things like the Sidekick to stay integrated with social networks on the go.  The Kin product line features two products, the Kin One and the Kin Two, and they’re designed to integrate seamlessly with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and all those sorts of cloud-based text and communication services.

The main selling point of the Kin is the Kin Loop, or The Loop, depending on who you talk to, which serves as a sort of default home screen for the Kin that keeps you up to date on messages you might have missed, Tweets from your friends list, and Facebook updates without having to search those things directly.  Rather, the Kin pulls that information off the cloud for you and displays it in an easy-to-access home screen.  No loading and closing pesky apps.  Actually, no apps, period!

The best thing about the Kin is that it allows you to filter out people and erase some of the noise from your various feeds.  After all, some friends are more equal than others.  If you don’t want to be spammed to death by Kevin Smith or MSNBC News, you can filter him out and concentrate on people you know IRL, which is a feature a long time in coming for pretty much every program designed to do this sort of thing.

Both devices are powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra chipset, which is a power-sipping chip set now used in Microsoft’s Zune (among other devices).  The Kin One is smaller, while the Kin Two is larger, has a bigger screen, and includes an HD camera.  Both devices are designed to do the same sorts of things, save Kin Two’s emphasis on video and pictures.  No word on prices yet, but hopefully they’ll be more reasonable than other smartphones.

Tags: Microsoft, Kin, Kin One, Kin Two, Microsoft releases new smartphone, NVIDIA Tegra, The Loop, Kin Loop, low-power smartphone, teenage smartphone, smartphone to monitor social networks, social networking cloud phone

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