Given that Microsoft nixed the Kin roughly 18 minutes after it launched, it should come as no surprise that the thing didnt, you know, sell very well.

But just how bad was it?

DaringFireball’s John Gruber says a “well-placed little birdie” pinned the number at around 503 units during its two month lifespan. If that’s true, it’s an absolute trainwreck; I’m fairly confident in saying that even the lowliest, rattiest dumb phone that carriers only keep around in the backroom for the sake of the people who come in demanding a phone that does absolutely nothing besides call people sells more than 503 units in two months.

It might not be quite that bad, though. PocketNow points out that the Kin Facebook app (an app which is automatically attached to a user when they sign on to Facebook from the Kin) has over 8,800 users. Unless 94% of the people using the Kin app installed it just for the hell of it (without buying a Kin), Microsoft sold quite a bit more than 503 units.

Still – even 8,800 units is an… well, the word “embarrassment” doesn’t quite capture the scale properly. Even at the full, no-contract price of $329 for the Kin One, 8,800 units only works out to 2.8 million dollars. While 2.8 million would be an impressive pull for any small operation, this is Microsoft we’re talking about. There was a team of engineers hired, user interfaces designed and coded, expensive hardware prototyped and built, launch parties and press conferences thrown.. there is no way that 2.8 million even begins to cover it.

It’s too bad, really. Some of the ideas — like the Kin Studio syncing service — were great. It’s too bad that nearly everything else about the handsets were garbage, as we’d predicted months before it was officially announced.

AndroidSpin just got their mitts on this supposed snapshot of T-Mobile’s end-of-the-year launch roadmap, and, after about 20 minutes of squinting, I think we’ve got most of it deciphered.

Here’s what we’ve gleaned from it so far:

• The Samsung Vibrant (Android) will launch on July 21st — which we knew.
• The Motorola Charm (Android) (which was announced sans launch date this morning) is also set to debut on July 21st.
• Looks like RIM will be launching something (though not so much as a name is given) in early September. If I had to guess, I’d wager that’d be the Curve 9300.
• HTC should be debuting an Android handset currently known as the HTC Vanguard on September 9th. This is the first we’ve heard of it.
• Early November brings the “Emerald”. The rumor mill has been spinning its gears about something called “Project Emerald” for a few weeks now, with the most recent rumors suggesting that it’s going to be one of HTC’s first Android 3.0 phones.
• It looks like the HTC Shubert might launch around November 17th. From what I’ve heard, the Shubert will be one of HTC’s first Windows Phone 7 handsets.
• Around November 3rd, Motorola looks to be lining up to launch two Android handsets: one’s called Jordan, and I think that other one reads “Begonia”. This is the first we’ve heard about these ones.

Alas, not much by way of new details — but at least we have tentative launch dates for all of these for whenever the rest of the details show up.

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments below

Vision-based augmented reality — that is, pulling in data from a device’s camera and using it to position and rotate 3D models drawn on top of an on-screen view of the real world — isn’t really anything new. We started seeing tech demos of the concept 5+ years ago, and games like Sony’s Eye of Judgment have been doing it for nearly as long. More recently, the concept has been moving to mobile phones — a perfect fit, given that the camera and display are built into one unit.

Up until this point, however, the idea has been more or less exclusive to those with gobs of cash or manpower to spare. Anyone who built up their own Vision-based AR tech generally kept it pretty close to their chest, so building a Vision-based AR app meant rebuilding things from the ground up.

It looks like the endless reinvention of the same wheel is coming to a close. At Qualcomm’s recent Uplinq conference, they announced their plans to release a free Vision-based AR platform to mobile developers. Why? To sell more phones, of course.

How does a free platform like this sell phones? It all makes sense when you consider the first (and only confirmed) OS they’ll be supporting: Android. You see, all this image parsing and model rendering requires some pretty beefy hardware. Most of the “beefier” Android handsets out there are running Snapdragon processors — which just so happen to be made by Qualcomm. Get developers to make apps with this platform, convince people they need faster phones, sell more Snapdragon phones. More phones sold = more chipsets ordered, and more royalties paid per sale.

Before we dive any deeper, check out the demo video:

Here’s how it works: the user obtains a gameboard, be it by printing it at home, pulling it out of a cereal box, whatever. This gameboard — or, more accurately, the unique pattern on the gameboard — serves as the item that the AR app looks for. The AR app identifies the board, calculates its size/orientation on the fly, and then renders objects on top. Rotate around the board, and the objects on screen rotate accordingly; move in closer, and the objects get larger relative to your movements. In time, this platform will grow to support multiple objects, and handle the identification of non-flat objects.

Even if you only brain storm for a few seconds, the idea bin seems pretty limitless. A chess board could have rendered, fully animated chess pieces dancing on top. Medical students could point it at a skeleton, and look at and around each part of the body, layer by layer, before ever touching a cadaver. A laptop repair parts company could show you exactly where your new hard drive should go, with a 3D exploded-view.

Qualcomm pulled in toy-maker Mattel as one of their first pre-launch partners, allowing them to build the Rock’em Sock’em Robots demo up above. The framerate wasn’t fantastic and there was a bit of obvious control lag — but given that they built this thing in a matter of a few weeks for the sake of the presentation, they get some slack.

More excitingly, however, is Qualcomm’s other partner: Unity. Unity is a rather fantastic multi-platform game development tool — in other words, you build a game in their SDK, and it’ll auto-port to iPhone, Xbox 360, PC, and a slew of other platforms with minimal tweakage. They’re launching the Android arm of their product in the coming weeks –and when they do, it’ll support Qualcomm’s AR platform.

Vision-based AR just went from mostly untouchable to something that just about any developer worth their weight in semi-colons should be able to dive into.

Disclosure: I was a moderator on a panel at Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference, where this was announced. I don’t believe this in any way determined my decision to cover this, but I’m mentioning this because transparency = a good thing.

- Steve Jobs, on the iPhone 4 reception issue.

[Image 1 via Dawn Jean Majors, Image 2 spotted by jmmo20]

From time to time, I find myself traveling on the Metro here in Seattle. You see, I’m lazy, and poor, so I don’t drive and I don’t want to bike more than a couple miles. So it’s the bus for me. I use Android’s SeattleBusFinder, which works, but isn’t exactly a UI revelation. If I could use this slick, gorgeous, and practical bus tracker app instead, I’d be much happier (and might even take the bus more).

I mean, look at it! The question (to be investigated further) is this: will the curated, Zune HD-inspired apps be the glory and limit of WP7? That is to say, will they be the only reason to buy one of these phones? I hope not, but I can think of worse things that could happen to a phone.

[via WMPowerUser]