HTC Surround Reviews
HTC became available strong at the Windows Phone 7 launch event with the introduction of five cellphone. Most were for the European and Asian markets, but AT&T landed the HTC Surround, while Sprint could possibly get the HTC 7 Pro in early 2011. The Surround is exclusive in the it gives you built-in surround-sound speakers with Dolby Mobile and SRS WOW HD technology–a cool but niche feature. With regards to devices go, the Samsung Focus are going to be the most suitable choice for most consumers.
Design
The Surround weighs a hefty 5.8 ounces and measures 4.7 x 2.4 x 0.5 inches. The phone feels well-crafted, with hard black plastic on the back and aluminum accents on the sides. The bottom 50 % of the phone slides out a half-inch to disclose the silver speaker grille, which happens to be perforated with tiny holes. The top of the Surround contains a 3.5mm headphone jack plus a sleep/power button, the right side features a volume rocker as well as a dedicated camera button, and the bottom carries a microUSB charging port.
Display
The 3.8-inch capacitive LCD on the Surround screen looks good, with strong, accurate colors and nice contrast. It possesses a great resolution of 800 x 480, so text and photographs were easy on the eyes. However, the screen looks a little dull next the Super AMOLED display on the Samsung Focus, another AT&T Windows Phone 7 device, not forgetting the category-best iPhone 4′s 960 x 640 Retina display.
Audio
The speakers actually deliver multichannel surround sound via Dolby Mobile and SRS WOW HD as well as activate it, you merely press the small button on the left-hand side of the speaker. You will find there’s significant difference if you make this happen, as the audio sounds richer and fuller. However, the overall sound quality did not really knock our socks off. It’s certainly a lot better than most, but songs still sounded somewhat tinny. Also, after a speakerphone call, the volume, even at its highest level, was too low to experience a conversation in a slightly noisier surroundings.
Performance
Everything responded quickly and Windows Phone 7 OS gives the device an extremely fast and fluid feel. The only lag was when an app was using the web to pull information, and this likely had more about AT&T’s 3G speeds than how soon the phone was putting data on-screen.
Camera and Camcorder
The Surround’s 5-megapixel camera isn’t great. The video mode experienced a focus bug?images went inside and out of focus during the lifetime of shooting a video. Three video modes requires 720p HD movies at 24 frames per second outdoors or 16fps indoors, 640-by-480 movies at 20 frames per second, or 320-by-240 videos at 20 frames per second. With about 1,150 lines of resolution, the still camera didn’t compare well to the Samsung Focus or the Apple iPhone 4 ($199, 4.5 stars), although the shutter lag was sufficiently good at 0.4 seconds. Low-light photos showed some blur from low shutter speeds, that is the case with most cameraphones.
Music and Video
The Surround, along with the other Windows Phone 7 phones, have their media architecture depending on Zune software, which is polished and is successful. The interface is organized with five categories–Music, Videos, Podcasts, Radio, and Marketplace. The video capabilities on the Surround are average. The included sample music video of Owl City’s “Fireflies” didn’t fill the entire screen and rendered its images with so-so amounts of detail. Videos that many of us recorded only okay at the same time. Audio in the videos was excellent, but video never lived around its end of the deal.
Call Quality and Battery life
The audio was mostly clear, but you can easliy hear some faint background noise. Plus, sound cut inside and out a couple of times, so we wanted to ask our callers to repeat themselves. The speakerphone volume was obviously a bit soft, in order that it was challenging to hear our caller once we entered into a slightly noisier room. The HTC Surround has a 1,230mAh lithium-ion battery by using a rated talk time of four hours or over to 11 times of standby time. The smartphone beat the rated talk time by half an hour in our battery drain tests. With moderate to heavy use, i was capable of go the full previous day needing to enter and recharge.
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