Pocket PC Seeker

The HTC Surround is ready for Windows Phone 7, but Windows Phone 7 isn't quite ready for the HTC Surround. The Surround distinguishes itself with a big, slide-out speaker and a kickstand, promising entertainment at your desk and in your car. But the Windows Phone 7 experience doesn't mesh well with a wide-format entertainment-focused phone, and overall, which, in my tests, felt more suited to the Windows Phone 7 OS.

Hardware and Phone Performance
At 4.7 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD), the 6-ounce HTC Surround is a chunkier, heavier phone than the Focus. It has a silvery bezel around the 3.8-inch, 800-by-480 LCD screen and Dolby and SRS logos on the soft-touch plastic back. The logos hint at the Surround's flagship feature—push the screen to the left, and out slides a speaker running the entire length of the phone. A small button on the speaker cycles through audio modes like bass boost and lots-of-depth-but-kinda-tinny modes.

As a voice phone, the Surround didn't perform particularly well in my tests. The Focus consistently connected calls in weak-signal situations, where the Surround failed. Voice quality, however, is solid. The earpiece sounds good, and transmissions through the mic are a bit quiet but have excellent noise cancellation. The speakerphone is of only average volume, since it doesn't use the huge front speaker—a real missed opportunity. Talk time, at 3 hours and 33 minutes, was short for a modern smartphone and much shorter than the Samsung Focus, which eked out close to 6 hours.