Microsoft shows off prototype mobile phone

Image of a Menlo device appearing in the Microsoft Research paper.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft apparently has no intention of letting its failure with Kin keep it out of the smartphone market.

The tech giant is working on a touch-screen phone under the codename "Menlo," according to a Microsoft Research paper titled "User Experiences with Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices," (PDF) about Menlo. From that paper:

"Menlo is a prototype mobile device with a capacitive touch screen (4.1" diagonal, 800x480) running Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 which incorporates a Bosch BMA150 3-axis accelerometer and Bosch BMP085 digital pressure sensor (barometer)."

The paper, which was first reported by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, also describes "Greenfield," an activity-based navigation app that helps users find a specific parked car. "This is useful both in situations where one has lost one's car and needs to find it, but also in finding a car parked by someone else, e.g. a private car parked by another family member, or a shared business vehicle," according to the paper.

However, Foley doesn't believe Microsoft plans to build its own phone but rather focus on developing a new mobile operating system that will work on a variety of processors.

Microsoft announced in June that it was pulling the plug on its social-focused Kin phone less than two months after the product hit the market.