Friday was my last day at Microsoft. I was working on the gaming story of the ill-fated Windows Phone 7. I've seen some depressing things from the phone teams, but I wanted to give the Kin team the benefit of the doubt for their unique approach. However, this review makes me genuinely embarrassed to say I used to work there. How do you even get a "Try again after restarting your phone" error message past a code review? My team certainly would not have allowed that.
The gaming/Xbox tie-in seems so obvious. I think we all expected to see this on the Zune HD and that's still mostly a work-in-progress. I can't decide if Microsoft is scared to leverage the Xbox brand or scared to delude it. As far as the price goes clearly these devices were conceived at a time when SmartPhones were $200+ and there may have been a bigger market for limited functionality devices at a lower price point. The one thing that stands out to me is the Kin Studio. I would like to have a similar feature on my iPhone.