Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

We spoke a month or so ago and got a little bit excited about the prospect of a Microsoft Zune phone which I was hoping was going to be a true iPhone beater sporting the new Windows Mobile 7. Originally the rumours were flying about that the phone development was called project “Pink”. Well Microsoft has now announced that Project “Pink” will now be coming this Autumn to Vodafone but has been renamed as Kin but it doesn’t appear that the all singing all dancing Windows 7 Zune Phone is the Kin. Maybe it’s the start of things to come.

Both the Kin 1 and Kin 2 are touchscreen phones with slide out QWERTY keyboards. The main emphasis on these phones is social networking and although the phones aren’t sporting Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 7 or even 6.5 Microsoft has developed another OS that the KIN can call its own, designed to complement it's social networking abilities.

Full specs are a little thin but what we do know is the Kin 1 is the smaller of the two and has a 5MP camera whilst the Kin 2 is slightly bigger but has a better 8MP camera, larger storage capacity and the ability to take videos at HD quality. Both will also pack the Zune HD software, which is great and certainly more than capable of challenging the iPhone’s music abilities.

The software features of both phones sound clever to it can collate all your favourite people’s statuses, messages and pictures all into one place called the Kin Loop. Also if you want to share yours, there’s the Kin Spot. Drag photos, messages and your status updates into it and then choose who you want to distribute them to. Then there’s the Kin Studio. Anything and everything you create on the phone can be sent to the cloud. This can then be accessed in any web browser and shared again to whoever you like.

Quite possibly the best thing i’ve heard this year and if it’s true i may actually wet myself. The Zune is Microsoft’s answer to the iPod. Despite the Americans getting every version we here in the UK seem to keep missing out on the PMP. Now it’s rumoured(quite strongly) that Microsoft will be bringing out a phone equivalent and hopefully this will be revealed at Mobile World Congress in a fortnight.

NVIDIA have supposedly confirmed that they will be attending the the Congress with Microsoft (reports come from MuyComputer). Now NVIDIA make the TEGRA chip which powers the latest Zune HD. Also it is believed that Windows Mobile 7 will be launched at the congress too so it certainly looks promising.

Taking into account what the Zune HD does you’ll be looking at a very good phone, depending on Windows Mobile 7 software being good, but should pack a lot of features better than what any current iPhone could achieve. The UI of the Zune HD is easy to use and will look great on the low power, sharp OLED capacitive touchscreen (Multitouch oooo yeah!). Powered by the TEGRA chip HD content and multitasking will be done effortlessly and can be shipped to your TV via its HDMI out. If it’s planning on going into the gaming world like the iPhone, Zune is already a part of Xbox Live and that would mean a very large market of gaming enthusiasts with access to content and massive multiplayer functions.

Will keep you all updated if and when i learn more.

Zdnet are reporting some very interesting information about the rumoured Microsoft Pink Phone.

While the Pink Phone has not been confirmed the rumours are largely fuelled by the specification for the Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1.

According to Znet they received the following specification from a “trustworthy source”

WM7 Chassis 1 Specification

Core requirements:
Processor: ARM v6+, L2 Cache, VFP, Open GL ES 2.0 graphics HW (QCOM 8k, Nvidia AP15/16(AKA Tagra) and TI 3430 all meet spec)
Memory: 256MB+ DRAM, 1G+ Flash (at least 512MB fast flash – 5MB/s unbuffered read @4K block size)
Display:  WVGA (800×480) or FWVGA (854×480) 3.5” or greater diagonal
Touch: Multi-touch required
Battery: Sufficient to meet Days of Use LTK requirements.
Controls: Start, Back, Send and End are required (soft controls allowed as long as they are always present).

Peripherals:
Camera: 3MP+, flash optional, 2nd camera optional (VGA resolution sufficient)
GPS: aGPS required
Sensors required: Light Sensor, Compass (3 axis, 5 degrees, 100 Hz sample rate), Accelerometer (3 axis, 2mg resolution, 100 Hz sample rate)
USB: High speed required, 20 MB/s transfer rate.
BlueTooth: BT2.1 required, must run MSFT BT stack, CSR BlueCore6 or later recommended.
Wi-Fi: 802.11B/G required, must run MSFT Native Wi-Fi stack, Atheros 6002 or Broadcomm 4325 recommended.
Connectors: Micro USB and 3.5mm Audio required.

Options:
FM tuner:  If tuner HW is present it will be detected and supported by the Media application.
Haptics
SD Card (Micro SD recommended)
DPAD, qwerty or 12/20 key keyboards all optional

It is strongly suspected that the reference to the QCOM 8k will be the immense Snapdragon's QSD8xxx-series chips

It is also worth noting that the NVIDIA Tegra platform is specifically listed as meeting the core CPU requirements, as well as TI's OMAP 3 platform and the Snapdragon. So in theory the hardware specification all add up, and more importantly they all add up to be a potentially awesome phone.