Kin One hands-on (photos)

Code-named the Pure and Turtle, Microsoft finally unveiled Project Pink and introduced the Kin One and Kin Two. Both phones place a heavy emphasis on social networking and are targeted toward a younger audience.

Of the two devices, the Kin One is the lower-end model. It features a QVGA capacitive touch screen, a 5-megapixel camera, and 4GB of internal memory, whereas the Kin Two has an HVGA touch screen, an 8-megapixel camera, and 8GB of storage capacity.

The Kin One also has the more interesting design, in our opinion. In its closed state, it has more of a squarish shape but with rounded edges and is quite compact, fitting nicely in the palm of your hand. You can then slide it open to reveal the full QWERTY keyboard.

Despite the phone's small size, the keyboard was actually pretty easy to use and didn't feel to cramped. The buttons have a nice oval shape to them with a decent amount of spacing between them. They're also raised above the phone's surface, so we found it pretty easy to type on.

Here is a profile shot of the right side of the phone in its opened state.

As we mentioned earlier, the Kin One is equipped with a 5-megapixel camera as well as a flash. It can also shoot video in standard definition. With the Kin phones, all photos are automatically geotagged and can be mapped via Bing Maps.

On top, you'll find a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The Kin's browser is based on the one found on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices but adds pinch-to-zoom capabilities, among other things. Unfortunately, there is no Flash support.

The Kin devices will be the first Windows phones to ship with Zune. The best part of this news, however, is that you get Zune Pass support so you can stream music over a 3G connection.

Even the packaging for the Kin One and Two are pretty interesting. The phones will ship in these canisters and will include product documentation as well as other accessories, we presume.