Looking for the most ardent Window Supporter, OG of the group

[wgs84]

My first Windows Mobile device was an HP iPAQ 1945, which had WM2003 on it. It cost me over $300, which was very pricey for me as I was just starting college, but I certainly got my money out of it (owned it for 13 years before I finally decided to e-recycle it). It was so cool. I used it to keep track of appointments and to-dos, listen to music, watch videos, take notes, record notes. Later on, I even got a Wi-Fi 802.11b SDIO card for it to browse the Internet. I know that now, all that stuff comes basic on even the cheapest budget phone, but at the time, having all that stuff in one tiny little device was amazing. The Palm m130 that I owned before it couldn't do half as much as my iPAQ.

 

[HeyCori]

Re: Looking for the most ardent WIndow Supporter, OG of the group

What was the Kin like? I always wanted to have one, but they were very hard to find.

*I originally wrote these impressions back in 2010 so I'm gonna be lazy and do a copy/paste job

On the new Kin that entire Loop/Spot screen has been taken out. Gone is the convoluted jumble of words and bubbles. In its place is well… nothing. The only two pages you get now are Apps and Favorites. That’s actually a huge benefit. Old Kin had boxes of words just littered all over the screen. I remember complaints about how disorganized the screen looked and I can understand why.

New Kin looks a lot more like Windows Phone 7. Your main screen now consists of standard menus like Contacts, Messages, Browser, Settings, etc. The icons take some getting used to but everything is conveniently labeled thus taking the frustration out.

Another feature that’s M.I.A. is the Spot.

As demonstrated in the video the Spot was a way to easily share pictures, updates, web pages, etc with your friends. Having never used the Spot I can’t say if I miss it. I can say that since getting the phone I have never felt the need to drag anything to a little small circle so I can text it to everyone. Its use seemed pretty situational to me and I’m glad it’s gone.

Despite a few issues the software is still solid. The web browser is good but slow at rendering text sometimes and the bookmark menu takes some getting used to. The screen lags a little bit when scrolling but it still has a great touch experience due to the capacitive touchscreen. The Zune player is wonderfully integrated. Not every feature is there but you’ll hardly notice they’re missing. Email syncing is effortless and you can scroll between multiple accounts. Like you’d expect from a feature phone, apps are bare-bones. If apps are your thing you’re best bet is to pony up the extra dough for a smartphone.

This is already much longer than I originally wanted so I’m going to quickly touch on the things I do and don’t like about the hardware. For starters the capacitive touchscreen is really nice. It makes navigating the phone a breeze. If you’ve only used resistive touchscreens then you’ll immediately notice how much of an improvement capacitive is. Pinch to zoom also works great when viewing photos. You can also pinch to zoom in/out when taking pictures, but the Volume button does the same thing.

I do wish the processor was a bit better as it sometimes takes a half second to render pictures/browser text. Also, as mentioned before there’s some lag when navigating the menus. It’s not so bad that you’re going to want to toss the phone, but if you’ve been using something like the Droid then you’ll quickly notice the difference.

Overall the software has some problems but everything works effectively, looks good and provides a pleasant experience. The Kin TWOm will make you feel like you own a smartphone without actually paying for one. In no way should you think the Kin is a crap phone. The software redesign has gone a long way to making it a fierce competitor in the feature phone market… if not for the fact that Microsoft is never going to design another one. But who knows, maybe they will sell like hotcakes and Verizon will beg Microsoft to make more…? Sounds impossible. Then again, so was the return of the Kin.