48 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|JAN 2011|www.maximumpc.com
HTC SURROUND
This is the fi rst
smartphone we’ve seen
with a slide-out set of
stereo speakers, which
support Dolby’s new mobile
standard. Frankly, we’d prefer
a keyboard, but the HTC Sur-
round’s speakers drive home the point that
Windows Phone devices are great for mu-
sic. If only this one packed musical punch.
In head-to-head testing, the HTC Incredible
pumped out as much volume and sounded
just as good.
The nice thing about the speakers is
that they lend this smartphone a nice heft.The Surround (an AT&T phone) measures
4.7x2.4x0.5 inches, and has 16GB of inter-
nal memory; our review unit had an avail-
able slot for a microSD card. Its battery life
was the best of the phones we tested, prob-
ably because its 3.8-inch TFT LCD capaci-
tive multitouch 480x800 screen was the
smallest of the three. Like all three phones
reviewed here, performance in web brows-
ing and general navigation was snappy. If it
had a keyboard instead of useless pop-up
speakers, this would be perfect.SAMSUNG FOCUS
The fi rst thing we noticed and appreciated
about Samsung’s fi rst WinPhone
(for AT&T) is its gorgeous
four-inch 480x800 Super
AMOLED screen, which
is vastly superior to the
screens on the other two
phones reviewed here.
The upside of Super
AMOLED is that the touch layer
of the screen is embedded in the glass,
which reduces the weight of the phone.
The Focus appears to be constructed
almost entirely of plastic, which explains
its weight of 4.3 ounces—remarkable forWINPHONE HARDWAREThree Windows Phone 7 Devices Reviewed
WINDOWS PHONE 7
The core of Windows Phone 7 is the home
screen and its symmetrical, Mondrian-style
arrangement of large square tiles, each of which
provides entry into a basic task such as email,
web browsing, games, text messaging, calendars,
and more. These tiles are plainly labeled and are
“live,” meaning that the OS constantly updates
them with new alerts in real time.
Beneath this striking design, however, lies
a number of step-saving effi ciencies. Across the
board, the WinPhone interface consistently re-
moves one to two steps from almost every single
smartphone task we perform on a day-to-day ba-
sis. The only real exception to this is the ability to
instantly read news, weather, and social updates
via the desktop widgets that Android permits.
As a general rule, the level of customization
consistently disappointed us. You can custom-
ize the placement of individual tiles on the Start
screen—an extended press on an icon allows
you to drag it around the home screen and place
it wherever you’d like. You can also “pin” just
about anything—applications, websites, photos,games, people, podcasts, and
more—to the home screen in the
same manner. Aft er just under
a week of usage, we wanted to
adjust the color and/or size of
individual tiles. We wanted to
leave a row of tiles blank in order
to group our applications. We
want to change font sizes. None
of this is currently possible.EMAIL AND OFFICE
Unrealistically, we expected that because
Exchange and Outlook are Microsoft products,
Outlook in Windows Phone 7 would function in
some kind of special manner. We were misguid-
ed. Performance around message delivery and
syncing is identical to Android and the iPhone.
Critics and users have groaned about the lack of
a unifi ed inbox that lumps all of our emails to-
gether. Our take: It’s a nicety, but not a necessity.
These days, most of us use separate inboxes to
refl ect our various personas—worker bee, familyman, pervert—so the separation makes sense.
SMS texting utilizes the now-standard threaded
approach, with each SMS conversation housed
in a separate window.
We were pleasantly surprised by the high
level of functionality the built-in (and free!)
mobile Microsoft Offi ce suite allows. Most of
the basic formatting and font options are here.
If you’re a PowerPoint maestro, be warned: You
can create and edit Word and Excel docu-
ments, but you can only edit pre-existing PPT
decks. We were surprised to discover that youDigging into the OS
There’s only one way Microsoft could earn
a ticket to the mobile phone dance: getting
Windows Phone 7 right on the fi rst trystandard. Frankly, we’d preferabout Samsung’s fi rst WinPhone
(for AT&T) is its gorgeous
four-inch 480x800 Superis vastly superior to the
screens on the other twoAMOLED is that the touch layerVERDICT$200 with two-year commitment
($500 otherwise), http://www.htc.cpm^6HTC SURROUNDWindows Phone’s large icons
are key; this design makes it
much easier to see updates
and notifi cations at a glance.You can place just about any-
thing—people, apps, songs,
podcasts, and more—on the
home screen.