Renowned guitar amplifier maker Marshall is going mobile. The England-based company on Thursday announced an Android-powered (Lollipop) smartphone designed for music lovers.
The Marshall London features a 4.7-inch 720p IPS display that's powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 401 SoC clocked at 1.2GHz alongside 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (expandable via SD card).
The handset also includes an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 2-megapixel shooter up front and a 2,500mAh removable battery. As you can tell, this is a lower-end smartphone in terms of sheer processing power and the like although it does have LTE connectivity, something that's often missing in budget-minded smartphones.
What it lacks in power, however, it more than makes up for on the music end. The phone has two large speaker grills on the front, dual microphones, dual headphone jacks up top, gold-colored accents and a faux-leather finish on the rear. A physical button across the top edge of the phone takes users straight to their music collection.
The handset was built in collaboration with Finnish design firm Creoir whose previous clients include Jolla and Nokia. It looks like an extension of the company's popular amplifiers which should resonate with diehard music fans.
Under the hood is a Wolfson DSP (digital signal processor) which, combined with the two headphone jacks and included bespoke DJ app, lets aspiring DJs mix their own tunes right on the phone. Other software tricks include a music app aggregator that brings together all of your music sources, a global equalizer and support for FLAC files.
The Marshall London is slated to go on sale August 21 priced at $499/£399 which also includes a set of Marshall Mode in-ear headphones.