Microsoft announced KIN, a new Windows Phone designed specifically for people who are active in social networking and staying connected to others. The company has partnered with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and Sharp to bring the KIN to life, designing it to deliver the social experience by blending a phone with online services and the PC through new features called the Loop, Spot and Studio. KIN will be exclusively available from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. beginning in May and from Vodafone this autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

“Working closely with our partners, we saw an opportunity to design a mobile experience just for this social generation — a phone that makes it easy to share your life moment to moment,” said Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. “We built KIN for people who live to be connected, share, express and relate to their friends and family. This social generation wants and needs more from their phone. KIN is the one place to get the stuff you care about to the people you care about most.”

KIN is built with social networking in mind, using a simple interface, and a unique hardware design that was developed in partnership with Sharp. There are two models called KIN ONE and KIN TWO. Both phones feature a touch screen and slide-out keyboard. KIN ONE is small and compact, made to easily operate with one hand, while KIN TWO has a larger screen and keyboard, in addition to more memory, a higher resolution camera, and the ability to record high-definition video. The 5 and 8 megapixel cameras in KIN ONE and KIN TWO, respectively, are designed for use in low light with image stabilization and a bright LumiLED flash.

The home screen of the phone is called the KIN Loop, which is always on and always updating, maintaining a constant feed of all the things happening in a users favorite social networking services. KIN automatically brings together feeds from Microsoft and third-party services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter all in one place, making it easier to stay connected. Customers can also select their favorite people, to automatically have their status updates, messages, feeds and photos prioritized. In addition, the KIN Spot is a new way for people to share what’s going on in their lives, by letting them focus on what they want to share rather than a specific application they have to use to do it with. Videos, photos, text messages, Web pages, location and status updates are shared by simply dragging them to a single place on the phone called the Spot. Once all the people and content are in the Spot to share, the user can choose how to share, and start broadcasting their content.

Another new feature announced was KIN Studio. With KIN Studio, almost everything created on the phone is available in the cloud from any Web browser. Photos and videos are presented in an online visual timeline so they are easy to view and share. The KIN Studio automatically backs up texts, call history, photos, videos and contacts, with plenty of storage to so users don't have to worry about running out of space on their phone or losing their data.

KIN will also be the first Windows Phone to feature a Zune experience — including music, video, FM radio and podcast playback. With a Zune Pass subscription, customers using Zune software on their PC can listen to millions of songs from Zune Marketplace on their KIN while on the go, or load their personal collection. KIN also features a rich browser with the ability to share pieces of the Web, local and Web search by Bing, and an RSS feed reader to pull down information on people and stories from the Web.