The HTC Surround was one of the original Windows Phone 7 devices announced in late 2010. I bought one in 2012 to replace a broken Samsung Focus. The Focus lasted 18 months of torture, and the Surround barley made it 4 months.The Surround has two pop-up speakers and a kick stand to watch Netflix, YouTube and listen to music. The problem is that this adds a LOT of bulk to the device. The sliding mechanism is more fragile than a phone without moving parts and this phone does not even benefit from having a real keyboard. Worse still is that you have to slide the speakers out when playing anything or the sound will come out muffled.Now I didn''t really mind the sliding speakers as I used the phone for Netflix a lot. The pop-up speakers and kickstand worked fine for watching movies on the go. But the experience was still bad because of the screen. For whatever reason, HTC decided to use some very old tech on the screen. Blacks are washed out and gray. Colors don''t pop. The screen was fairly small at 3.7" and motion wasn''t as smooth as on the Samsung Focus. All in all, it''s a pretty terrible viewing experience. This is completely inexcusable for any device running Windows Phone that relies so heavily on deep blacks and saturated colors.So how about durability? Yeah, not so much. As I said, this phone lasted 4 months compared to my Previous Samsung Focus under the same conditions (lasting 18 months). When dropped, the screen shattered. This was no Gorilla Glass, and it showed.So how about performance? The Surround uses the same Snapdragon processor of other first generation Windows Phones and many Android phones of that time (late 2010). The Surround uses a slower 16GB Sandisk SD hard for its internal memory (it is not swappable, and cannot be removed). The result is that the phone takes a lot longer loading apps then other phones using NAND memory such as the Focus.If you are looking for a cheap replacement smartphone running WP7, the Samsung Focus is a better alternative. If you want something running WP8, try the Nokia 520. This phone simply has no real advantage over anything else on the market today, even for bargain hunters.