Controls and Use
Contents
The hardware specs for Windows 7 Phone devices are standard across all of the devices that run this software. This includes the 3.8-inch LCD with 480 x 800 resolution. The screen is bright and the colors are vibrant, but it cannot compare to the retina display on the iPhone 4 or the Super AMOLED devices like the Samsung Galaxy phones. That said, the screen is quite useable and looks good unless viewed side-by-side with one of these other devices. The screen brightness defaults to automatic, but it can be changes to low, medium, and high to suit your needs. At high resolution, the screen is very bright, but, of course, uses more battery power.
Although, in most cases, the rechargeable Lithium Ion battery will last an entire day, this phone seems to drain more quickly when it is not in use. So be prepared to charge it every evening, even if you are not a big talker.
Figure 4 shows the front of the Surround with the unlock screen. This screen shows the time, date, number of email, missed calls or texts, and your next appointment or event. The status bar at the top shows the strength of signal, battery, and other indicators such as Wi-Fi and airplane mode. On this screen you can also see the three main touch-control icons on the bottom: Back, Start (Home), and Search. At the top of the screen is the phone speaker.
Figure 4: The Surround unlock screen
Unlocking the screen reveals the Windows 7 Phone Start screen, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: The Start screen
The home screen, which Microsoft likes to call the “Start” screen, has Tiles that line up in two columns. Some Tiles are double-wide which seems to be controlled by the app developer. You scroll vertically to see more Tiles. This screen can display both hubs and apps. It can also be customized with favorite pictures, web pages, and contacts.
Hubs are special areas in Windows Phone 7. There are six standard Microsoft hubs: People, Pictures, Games, Music & Videos, Marketplace, and Office. On this phone, there is also an HTC hub. Hubs are horizontal panoramas of information. Only a portion of the hub is shown on any screen. As shown in Figure 6, the side of the portion of the hub that you are viewing is visually cut off indicating that you can swipe your finger to reveal the next screen with more information. While this may sound a bit confusing, it is actually very intuitive and easy-to-use. This is the same methodology that is used in Microsoft’s Zune software. So if you are a Zune user, you will be very comfortable with it. If you are not a Zune user, you will still find it easy to learn.
Figure 6: A hub
In Figure 6, there is also an arrow near the top right that indicates that you can scroll in that direction. Doing that will give you a list of all objects, including apps, hubs, and things like Settings. This provides an alternate way to view items and also lets you see the items that you don’t have displayed on the home screen.
All-in-all, the Windows 7 Phone operating system is well-thought-out and intuitive. Although there is swiping, zooming, and panning like other smart phones, the entire user interface seems smoother and more fluid. It is, however, very different from Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system. With Windows 7 being the youngest of these systems, it is not surprising to find some excellent innovations like Hubs right alongside of some omissions like consistent support of landscape mode, which we will talk about later in this review.
The top of the Surround is shown in Figure 7, where you can see the sleep/wake button and the standard headphone jack. The bottom of the device, shown in Figure 8, has only two openings: the microphone and the USB charging and computer-connection port.
Figure 7: The top of the Surround
Figure 8: The bottom of the Surround
Setting up the Surround is easy. You don’t need a Windo
ws Live ID to use the phone, but you do need one for the Marketplace and other features.
This phone supports standard POP3/IMAP accounts as well as Exchange accounts. Setting up most email accounts is easy. Outlook accounts not connected via Exchange ActiveSync, however, must go through Windows Live Mail in the cloud to get their calendar and contacts in sync. This is a bit more complicated, but still doable. There is no unified inbox, but the email feature is easy to use and powerful enough for the average user. Your Windows Live account can also give you a backup of your data and tools to locate or wipe your phone if it gets lost or stolen.
This Window 7 Phone integrates well with Facebook, but we didn’t find a Twitter app yet. The Marketplace is bare-bones compared to the iPhone app store, but it is growing.
With the 1 GHz processor, the phone is snappy with little lag time and so web surfing is pleasurable. The mobile version of Internet Explorer is quite useable and the default search engine is, of course, Microsoft’s Bing. The Office hub offers integration with Microsoft Office including limited creation and editing capabilities in Word and Excel. The mobile version of OneNote is a useful general purpose note taker.
Text entry on the Surround is easy. The screen is responsive and the standard on-screen QWERTY keyboard, shown in Figure 9, is well laid out and easy to use. It is the same in landscape and/or portrait mode. As you start using it, you will find little things that are very welcome. For instance, this Windows Phone 7 visibly changes between caps and non-caps, so, unlike the iOS keyboard, you know exactly what you are typing. While both cut and paste and flash were missing on the phone we reviewed, Microsoft has promised that both will be available soon.
Figure 9: The on-screen keyboard
When using this phone you will quickly notice that landscape mode is not available in all areas in Windows Phone 7 operating system. For instance, you can reply to an email in landscape mode, but hubs do not work in landscape mode, so if you want to search a hub, you will have to type in portrait mode. Also, the verbal search mode is available when using Bing, the default search engine, but is not available in several other areas, like the Marketplace or People search.
Of course, the HTC Surround has all of the necessary voice features for a smart phone. While AT&T service was still spotty in several areas where we tested it, it was good in most urban environments. The Surround supports quad-band world roaming and has a speakerphone, conference calling, voice dialing, text and multimedia messaging. It also supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, and GPS. The dialer app is a tile on the home page which takes you to a list of recent calls. You must then press the small keypad icon to make a call. We would have liked that process to be a bit more streamlined, but didn’t consider it a big inconvenience, especially since we could press and hold the Start button to verbally tell the phone who to call and to speak commands. We could also put often-called people on the Start page.
