Top 5 Features Missing from Microsoft’s New Kin Phones

There’s a lot we like about Microsoft’s approach to its new Kin handsets, especially when it comes to the ease of sharing content with others and the Studio feature for seeing all the pictures and videos you’ve captured in a slick timeline. But in some ways Kin feels incomplete, even given its target audience of social networking fiends.

1. No third-party apps or games: This is just a really odd omission, given that apps have become a form of social currency. We get that Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are integrated, but no games? No Foursquare?
2. No instant messaging: Microsoft told us that texting is the primary means of communcation for the target audience of Kin. Still there are a lot of people who want to directly contact people using mediums other than Twitter.
3. No calendar app: Kin users live in the now, and apparently livestreaming doesn’t have room for planning too far ahead. You can set an alarm though! And you can also use online calendars.
4. No GPS Navigation: Although you can get directions to addresses in Bing maps, turn-by-turn navigation is not part of Kin–at least not at launch.
5. You can’t share pictures via Twitter: This is a head scratcher. Given how easy it is to share pics via e-mail, MMS, and Facebook, we also see Kin owners wanting to broadcast pics (and videos) along with their updates.
   

Bonus Missing Feature: Only the Kin One will automatically upload videos you capture with its camera to Kin Studio online. The Kin Two’s higher resolution footage (720p) is too large to upload, though I don’t see why Microsoft couldn’t compress the footage in the process.