Looks like the Verizon/Vodafone exclusivity on the Kin 1 and Kin 2 might be short-lived — or at least, someone at Microsoft is already prepping for the day when it’s over.
Days before the Kin 1 and 2 were made official, a ROM hacker known only to the internets as Conflipper published screenshots pulled from an early copy of the Kin OS. After a bit more digging, Conflipper just stumbled upon some more goodies: Kin system provisioning files for other carriers. Lots.. and lots of other carriers.
Provisioning files are pre-packed settings bundles — in this case, it looks like they might be pre-packed setting bundles used to quickly configure Kin handsets for use on a variety of networks.
Conflipper’s full dump of the provisioning file directory can be found here — but for simplicity’s sake, here’s a cleaned up version of the list:
- ATT (US)
- T-Mobile (US)
- Verizon (US)
- Fido (Canada)
- China Mobile
- China Unicom
- O2 (Germany)
- T-Mobile (Germany)
- Vodafone (Germany)
- Vodafone (Spain)
- Vodafone (France)
- Vodafone (Portugal)
- Vodafone (Italy)
- DoCoMo (Japan)
- Softbank (Japan)
- Telia (Sweden)
- Three (Sweden)
- Orange (UK)
- O2 (UK)
- Vodafone (UK)
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that any of the carriers above (outside of Verizon and Vodafone) will be getting the Kin 1/Kin 2. Some could be getting exclusive Kins of their very own. Or these could just be temporary files created for demonstrating the handsets to the carriers on their own networks back when Microsoft was originally pitching them. Or some bored intern could have just created a bunch of provisioning files for the hell of it.