We're live and in our seats. They're asking all pictures to be held until 10:05 - so expect a bunch of info/pictures to dump in then.
The show begins at 10 o'clock sharp, Pacific.
The auditorium (which is actually a dance club) is starting to get slammed. All the seats (about 30) are filled, with about 50 people standing behind us.
The TVs have all flipped on, showing a bunch of young and presumably angsty folks going to parties, running around, and wistfully staring out of moving car windows.
Looks like they're pushing the event start back to 10:05
The embargo just dropped, so heres what we know so far:
- Devices are Kin 1 and Kin 2
- Kin 1 is the portrait slider previously known as Turtle. 5 megapixel camera.
- Kin 2 is the landscape slider previously known as Pure. 8 megapixel camera.
- Launching on Verizon
- Not windows phone 7. Platform is silverlight based, though.
- Very much social networking oriented, especially around status updates and sharing stuff from your news feed by a constantly-on-screen bit called "The Spot"
Robbie Bach of MSFT has entered the stage
"This is one of the best part of my job. Not being in a bar at 10 am, but revealing something we've been working on."
"The best way to tell this story is to go to the customers. We spent thousands of hours with thousands of customers, talking to them about what they wanted before we wrote a single line of code"
Robbie Bach starts up a video. Its a bunch of young folks, talking about their love for social networks. "I've got thousands of friends. I actually care about .. maybe a few of them"
The video has comed to an end.
Robbie Bach's recapping what all the young folks said: "Social life is #1. Friends, friends, and friends."
"As you hard, people have 'thousands of friends'.. they followe celebrities, etc.. but theres only so many they care about"
Microsoft calls this social-network-hungry audience "socialogists"
"How do we bring this [social life] to a phone?"
"If you talk to these people, they feel like no phone has been built for them."
"Now where does this fit in our strategy: In February, we announced Windows Phone 7, the best multi-purpose platform we can build. That's Windows Phone 7, our broader offering"
"As we were working on 7, we said 'wow, we have this opportunity to pursue a smaller, target audience"
(Confirming what we said below - this isn't Phone 7-based)
"We're gonna crank social up to 11, just like we did on the Xbox with Xbox Live"
Robbie continues to talk about their goal of building a phone for the social network crowd
"Today I want to introduce you to the newest member of the family: Kin.
"
Bam, there's the first picture of the hardware we can show
Hey all. Devin here, live from the Microsoft campus. We're watching a (slightly laggy) web stream of the event.
and I'll have a chance to get a little more up close and personal afterwards.
They're now describing the Loop, which is the 3 pane homescreen
Same "slow" animations between screens
It pulls data from all of your social network and RSS feeds on the first pane
while the second pane is your contacts (with "Favorites" at the top), and the third pane is where you access things like the phone and browser
At the bottom of the screen is the "Spot", a centralized location where you can drag content to be shared with your contacts and networks
Pick content, then pick a contact/network to share it with
The people you interact with most (your "Favorites" are at the top of the second pane, showing their updates as a priority.
Kind of reminds me of MyFaves.... your "top 5" that you'll have at one tap's reach
