Microsoft KIN ONE & TWO Windows Phones Made Official By Verizon

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Microsoft unveiled today the “next generation of the social phone with KIN a new Windows Phone”, at least that’s what one of Verizon’s latest press releases is saying. In case you’re not familiar with KIN then I’ll gladly tell you that the KIN phones are the former Project Pink handsets. That’s right the Turtle and Pink are now being referred to as the KIN ONE and KIN TWO.

As initially believed these two handsets are social networking-based. They aren’t the Windows Phone smartphones we expect but they will be ready to help you improve your socializing skills on the go.

Microsoft has been apparently working with Verizon, Vodafone and Sharp to make the new KIN handsets. Are we looking at new Sidekick-like devices here?

Both the KIN ONE and the KIN TWO (hate that all caps names, don’t you?) come with touchscreen displays and full slide-out QWERTY keyboards. But we wouldn’t expect anything else from any phone these days.

The ONE is the former Turtle which looks like a square and will offer you a 5-megapixel camera with a bright LumiLED flash and capable of shooting regular SD video. The device comes with a mono speaker “tuned well for speakerphone”, 4GB of memory and Zune media player capabilities.

The TWO is the former Pure and resembles more to the Sidekick family and it’s going to offer you an 8-megapixel camera with flash and HD video recording, stereo speakers and 8GB of memory space. The TWO will also act as a Zune player.

You’ll notice how both handsets come with a new home screen referred to as the KIN Loop, “which is always up to date and always on” showing you what your friends are doing as there’s plenty of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace integration.

KIN Studio is a web app that will help you backup your KIN phone and let you access its features online in any web browser. Does that mean we’ll not witness any Sidekick fiascos anymore?

Curious about prices and arrival dates? Well so are we but hopefully we’ll have more details once the official Microsoft keynote (happening right as I am writing these lines) reaches the end.

Anyone interested in this KIN Windows Phone yet?