surround

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that my HTC Surround was acting a little strangely. The main issue I was experiencing was, when I attempted to download and install updates for some of my apps, I kept getting an error message telling me to try again later. After this happened a few times throughout the day, I finally decided to power cycle (turn it off and back on again) my phone to see if that would fix the issue.

Little did I know, though, that my phone would never turn back on again (not properly, at least). When I turned it back on, I got the familiar white “HTC” screen that I usually see for about a second before it loads the “Windows Phone” splash screen and finished booting up. Sadly, it never progressed past that white HTC screen. Read More

A while back, I asked the Twittersphere if they had any idea what the little button on the HTC Surround’s speaker did. For the first month or two that I owned the phone, I didn’t even realize that it was a button; I just thought it was an inset tweeter or something on the speakers themselves. Then, at one point, I accidentally pressed it and realized that I got haptic feedback.

No one on Twitter had any answers. I started searching online, and couldn’t find any information about it, either. Then, the other day, I happened to be watching a video on my phone and accidentally pressed the button again. Lo and behold, the sound quality changed. I pressed it again, and there was another change to the sound quality.

It then occurred to me that that button actually changes the speaker mode for the phone. Pressing the button will switch the phone between “No effects”, “Dolby Mobile” and “SRS Enhancement”. This magical button is located in the top left of your speaker deck when you slide it out and hold the phone in landscape mode. Read More