KIN ONEm

Pros

  • Excellent QWERTY keyboard
  • WiFi
  • Fantastic 5 MP autofocus camera with a flash
  • Zune music player built-in (worth $100 by itself)
  • Impressive email client
  • One of the best web browsers for a featurephone
  • Capacitive touchscreen
  • Unique UI

Cons

  • We're not sure what the deal is with these phones or how long Verizon plans to continue selling them. Most of the advertised features have been shut down so we're guessing the phones themselves will discontinued shortly. In short, buyer beware.
  • Hardware design may be a turn-off for some people. It's a love it or hate it thing.

Summary

It's true that Microsoft shut down the KIN Studio, KIN Loop, and KIN Spot services, basically whittling the phone down to a simple featurephone; however, this may have been more of a positive than a negative. The social networking features were nice, but the overall performance of those features was simply not up to par with expectations and disappointing overall. Without those features, the phone is actually pretty good and contains other features that you simply won't find on other featurephones, at least not together. The capacitive touchscreen, excellent camera, WiFi support, Zune player, and impressive e-mail client make this one a no-brainer. Proceed without caution though and consider that con we brought out.

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