Our Verdict
The Surround is another unanimous smartphone oblation from HTC . If you care the Windows Phone 7 experience , this French telephone will not impede that experience in any manner ( you necessitate theWindows Phone 7 Connector for Macsoftware to use Windows 7 Phones with your Mac . ) .
I will focus here on the telephone itself , discussing elements of the OS where appropriate . For more on the software that runs the Surround , see our double-dyed fusee and review article of the Windows Phone 7 operating system .
The HTC Surround ’s slide - out verbaliser panel . The Surround is intend to be a WP7 smartphone establish to play medicine – out loud . It features a pull - out speaker console table with a pair of small verbalizer inside where you ’d commonly expect a forcible keyboard to be . From the promo material : “ the HTC Surround blur the line between home and fluid entertainment . ” HTC even croak so far as to call it a “ windfall loge . ” Really ?
The HTC Surround’s slide-out speaker panel.
The Surround expends a lot of conception effort seek to do something that is n’t yet possible in a twist of this size : make itsoundgood – without phone .
The pullout cabinet has a short clitoris on the side that switches the healthy quality from bum radiocommunication sound to supertinny wireless sound . Now that ’s two modes of mellow - fidelity audio power ! HTC uses other names for these modes : Dolby and SRS WOW surround auditory sensation . Of course if you like plaguy people on the bus , torturing detent , or ridding your basement of roaches , the innovation might be just what you ’ve been looking for .
That said , environment owners will have plenty of music and video available to them at the Zune avail , which you could access through a consecrate hub on the telephone set ’s rest home screen .
Another Solid HTC Phone
Aside from the failed surround - sound gimmick , I found the Surround to be a solid phone , and very much in the admirable HTC design tradition . The phone weigh 5.82 ounces ( with stamp battery ) , felt sturdy in my hand , and had a courteous , solid heft to it . Its dimensions are 4.71 inch marvelous , 2.42 inch wide , and just a whisker over 0.5 inch duncish . The telephone set has a brushed metallic element housing around the front , backed with pitch-black matte charge plate . A standard headphone jack occupies the top left edge , while up and down bulk push button sit on the right edge , with the camera button below , near the bottom . On the bottom edge you ’ll find a standard mini - USB port .
The phone also carries three hardware button that Microsoft need on all Windows phones : ‘ back ’ , ‘ Start ( home screen ) ’ , and ‘ search ’ . I barely used the search button , but the other two button , which I used extensively , covered my piloting needs just fine , in combination with the onscreen navigation features that Windows Phone 7 provides .
Inside the phone is a 3 G cellular radio that can handle top data transfer of training speeds of 7.2 mbps down and 384 kbps up on AT&T ’s connection . With such a low upload speed roof , sound luck toy game with friends or upload large Indian file to the cloud . You also get a normal GPS radio set , a Wi - Fi radio ( which supports 802.11b / g / n ) , a compass , a proximity sensor , and an accelerometer .
Call Quality
The voice speaker on the Surround vocalize almost as good as the ‘ hi - fi ’ disengagement speakers . In our test vociferation , the voice on the other end sound clear and crisp and even had a footling torso to it , beyond the usual “ radiocommunication vox ” sound . The vocalisation mike was equally telling . Not only did my spokesperson sound likewise open and full - embodied to the person on the other end , but the stochasticity cancellation circuitry cut out almost all of the noisy dealings whir by me during the trial . My testing better half said it sound as if I were calling from a quiet elbow room .
I have offered similar extolment for the loudspeaker system and mic used in the iPhone 4 . The Surround does n’t quite match the iPhone in interpreter quality , but it comes very close .
When I used the include bud headphones - talk of the town mic combo , the other somebody ’s articulation fathom clear . But since I was no longer using the vocalisation - canceling mike inside the phone , my vocalization sound pocket-size and chintzy to the person I shout .
Photos and Video
I was impressed with the photo and TV shot by the Surround . In ikon quality , they seemed to be a footprint up from the content I shoot with my HTC EVO 4 K ( on Sprint ) , which serves to document a minute , but is nothing you ’d need to watch more than once . The Surround run around a 5 - megapixel television camera with autofocus and shoot , and it captured crisp still images and knifelike , smooth television in my hands - on examination ( tap the thumbnail to see the full - sizing effigy ) . Also , HTC made a enceinte move by putting a consecrate physical push on the exterior of the speech sound . This alone made the Surround ’s camera far easy to utilise than the camera on my EVO , which necessitate me to hit a spot on the touchscreen to activate the tv camera .
On the other hand , the Surround lack the front - facing photographic camera of the EVO , suggesting that videoconferencing is not a core pursuit of the music lover that HTC and AT&T hope will purchase this phone .
Processor Speed
The Surround comes with a 1MHz processor that the speech sound uses to full advantage for media playback . Watching HD video on the Surround ’s 3.8 - column inch , 480 by 800 pixel WVGA screen was a pleasant experience : Movement in the video flowed smoothly , and the detail seemed acute .
Since HTC dedicated its microscope slide - out area to speakers , there ’s no elbow room for a physical keyboard on the Surround . So you have to make do with the touchscreen keyboard . I found that typing was at least as light on the Surround as on the iPhone 4 . When you impinge on a key , that primal pops up in a larger size so you’re able to easy tell whether your fingerbreadth or thumb hit its grade . In a two - line textual matter message that I typed at normal speed without making any allowance for the keyboard , I made a amount of two errors .
One thing puzzle me though : With the keyboard in landscape mode , it ’s easy to see that HTC did n’t use the whole breadth of the concealment for the keyboard . About 4 millimetre of fresh space appears on each side . This could have been used for key breadth , which would have made typing on the Surround ’s virtual keyboard that much easier .
I ’m being pretty hard on HTC ’s “ boom box ” vision for the Surround , but I just ca n’t see why exploiter would n’t be dependable off with another HTC WP7 earpiece that put a strong-arm keyboard in the pullout - out panel . In other wrangle , the Surround ’s main gimmick deduct something and adds nothing to the value of the headphone .
