Looking back at the HTC Surround, with the slide-out surround sound speaker

One of the first Windows Phone 7 models to launch, the HTC Surround received its name from a specific feature. The phone was equipped with a slide-out Dolby speaker that presented surround sound with the tap of a button. Released in the U.S. on November 8th, 2010 as an AT&T exclusive ($199.99 with a two-year contract), the Surround came equipped with a 3.8-inch LCD display carrying a 480 x 800 (WVGA) resolution. Under the hood was the Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 QSD8250 chipset containing a single-core 1GHz Scorpion CPU and the Adreno 200 GPU.

The Surround came with 448MB of RAM and 16GB of native storage. On back was a 5MP camera with 720p HD video capabilities. The Surround did not offer a front-facing camera, but did come with a 1230mAh battery. A kickstand  hidden on back allowed users to view content at the perfect angle. Windows Phone 7 was pre-installed, and the device did eventually receive an update to Windows Phone 7.5. Less than a year after its launch, the HTC Surround was removed from the AT&T website.

Our review of the HTC Surround gave the phone a score of 8.5 out of 10. Despite such promise, the platform never caught on and remains a distant third after Android  and iOS.

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