Isaiah's Tech

I'm not going to cry over this since Microsoft "Pink" never seemed all that desirable in the first place, but it looks like the project has been canned. I don't have much left to say because Mobile Crunch got the scoop on it below. I'm sure this won't make anyone sad anyway. Goodbye Pure and Turtle - even if it isn't official at this point. Anyways, Microsoft should start working on that Zune HD Phone now...

• Much of the Danger/Sidekick team has left or been fired since the 2008 acquisition. According to our source, there is “no braintrust that understands how to build a product” left on the Pink team.
• If a product does ship, it will lack the third party application support/store that rumors have indicated it would have – the remaining team members simply don’t know how to get it done.
• Amongst remaining employees, dissent is high. Much of the team uses iPhones around the office, or their old Sidekick handsets. Employees “hate the product” internally, many feeling that the division exists only to “challenge [the Windows Mobile 7 team] and upset them into competing.” Our source outright indicated that they felt the product was never intended to ship.
• At this point, the project is roughly 2 years behind schedule. In order to continue moving forward toward some undefined launch date, basics such as a calendar application have already ended up on the cutting room floor.
• On the “Turtle” (the smaller of the two devices): The touchscreen is unusable, as there are too many elements on screen at one time. “Your finger covers 50% of the screen”, says the source. The unit was designed “on the fly”, with a design drawn up and then sent to Sharp for verbatim manufacturing. Our source says this backwards design process has lead to a “near disastrous” battery life. “Designers forced Sharp to build to sketch and not ‘worry about that stuff.’”
• The UI concept work was originally done by an outside party, and Microsoft engineers have been “struggling to replicate it ever since”.

[Mobile Crunch]