Marshall is making a smartphone. Yes, that Marshall – high-end audio equipment making Marshall. Unsurprisingly, their first smartphone, the Marshall London, takes its visual appearance from the iconic look of Marshall’s audio equipment range, replete with gravel-finish black plastic and gold highlights. It’s not going to set the world on fire with its mid-range specs – a Snapdragon 410, 2GB RAM and 4.7-inch display will presumably still give you some zippy Android 5.0.2 performance – but it’s the predictably audio-centric features of the London that will have audiophiles salivating (or at least Marshall hopes).
If you take a look at the device, you’ll notice that it has dual audio jacks, allowing for those random, but necessary, dual listening sessions. But the pièce de résistance of the Marshall London is its bespoke audio processing – the use of a special Wolfson soundcard, global equalizer, and Bluetooth aptX audio. That makes the London sound a lot like another device, namely the $1,000 Sony Walkman that Sony announced at CES 2015, which begs the question: how much will the Marshall London cost? Well, the answer is actually ‘less’.
Yes, despite Marshall’s pedigree and the London’s obvious audio prowess, the Marshall London is going to work out to be around $600 USD, or thereabouts based on a rough conversion. Sure, for the Average Joe, $600 is much too much to pay for a phone with mediocre specs, but for the audiophile that has been looking for a smartphone to match their audiophillic needs, this might just be the ideal handset. Marshall says that the London should be shipping in August and will ship with a pair of Monitor headphones as a free gift. Bonus.
What do you think about the Marshall London? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Marshall Headphones via Droid-life
