And so ends Microsoft's brief spell as a phone manufacturer. The company has just announced that it's terminating its KIN line and focusing all of its resources on the development of their upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS.

 

Here comes the official statement:

"Microsoft has made the decision to focus on the Windows Phone 7 launch and will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones."

So the KIN duo never lived to see it GSM-supporting versions become available. It only made it to Verizon's CDMA network in the US (where it has been available for just under two months), but its sales didn't even reach 10 000 units milestone.

After that and the universally negative reviews that the KIN handsets got after their release it's hardly a surprise that Microsoft decided to give up on it. When you spend so much time and effort (and mostly so much money) and you end up with a product often described as one of the biggest flops in history, simply giving up seems the right thing to do.

Trying to bring the project back on the right track would be a really demanding task (if at all possible with so much catching up to do) and Microsoft simply cannot afford to waste resources on it. Not with the Windows Mobile OS market share dropping into irrelevance and its future hanging by a thread.

With the fierce competition from Android and iOS, Windows Phone 7 has to be (close to) perfect to regain some of the past glory of the Microsoft smartphone platforms. So if dropping the KINs is what needs to be done to make it perfect, we wholeheartedly support the Redmond-based company on this decision.

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One of the biggest areas for growth in smartphones has been gaming with numerous titles having emerged over the past couple of years. The iPhone especially has proven itself a very powerful, and attractive, platform for gaming. Android has been making an increasingly good showing in the gaming arena too.

However, there exists a rather bizzare aberration in all of this, which sees very little cross platform gaming between Android and iOS despite them being at the forefront of smartphone gaming. There are a couple of titles outt here that offer this sort of cross platform option including Raging Thunder 2 and Homerun Battle 3D. Well gamers on both platforms can now add Skies of Glory to that list. The game has been ported to Android (2.0 and above) and can communicate with its iOS brethren over Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G should you be unable to resist the urge to show your friends just which OS really is king.

A Leaked internal documents Shows the Verizon's 4G plans, and it's mostly stuff we've already heard 5-12Mbps down, aircards before smartphones, and plans to roll out in 30 cities in 2010

This documents dated this week show the company's still on track to serve up 100 million connections by the end of the year, and a pair of independent tipsters have just sent us pics of Verizon computers ready and waiting for those precious LTE SIM cards. Furthermore, the docs also claim that the planned LTE isn't just fast, it's got a lag-destroying 30ms latency too, and fans of wider wireless computing can expect 4G tablets of some sort in 2011 as well. 

 

 

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LTE (Long Term Evolution), is the latest standard in the mobile network technology tree that previously realized the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSxPA network technologies. It is a project of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), operating under a name trademarked by one of the associations within the partnership, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

 

 

After the Apple Conference, it was about time for the respond of the companies affected by Apple's statements from company's press conference that took part last Friday. Well, here is what these companies has Commented Officially on the Apple State of their own phones Antennas One-ByOne:

 

 

 

While the South Koreans have no official statement about the Antennagate, a Samsung spokesman did answer some questions concerning it."The antenna is located at the bottom of the Omnia 2 phone, while iPhone's antenna is on the lower left side of the device. Our design keeps the distance between a hand and an antenna," Shin Young-joo said.

"We have fully conducted field tests before the rollout of smartphones. Reception problems have not happened so far, and there is no room for such problems to happen in the future,"

 

As for Motorola, Sanjay Jha, the company's co-CEO, responded that "consumers don't like being told how to hold the phone ... It is disingenuous to suggest that all phones perform equally". He also added that unlike Apple, Motorola avoids placing the antennas on the outside of their phones since that could cause reception issues.

HTC when asked about the number of complaints coming from HTC Droid Eric customers, the company's global PR and online community manager, Eric Lin, said that only 0.016 percent of all HTC users have complained about the Droid Eris and only a few of them have experienced with the device's antenna and signal.

Even if none of Nokia's phone has been mentioned during the conference, the company has a statement concerning that matter as well: "Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That's why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design."

The Co-CEOs of Research In Motion (RIM), Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, share their indignation at Apple's move. It was Apple itself who decided to use this antenna design. So, it should stand behind that decision and deal with it alone and not involve RIM in "Apple's self-made debacle". After all, it isn't the BlackBerries that need a case to maintain proper connectivity. Here is RIM's Co-CEOs whole joint statement:

"Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM's customers don't need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple."