You know the drill: you've got your records at home, music files on your hard drive, and some serious speakers and headphones to go with it. The problem: mobility. Taking all that music with you and listening to it in the same high quality as you do at home, in that same high quality that it was meant to be listened to, well, there's not many devices that can handle.
Step up British audio experts Marshall and the first smartphone made by music lovers for music lovers: the Marshall London.
While we've had portable MP3 players for a while, as well as smartphones that can play music, invariably they've either struggled to play larger, uncompressed, music files and played the field in terms of skills, programs and features. Tinny portable speakers, poor quality cameras, and memory that you can barely fit five apps and an album on hasn't been anything to get too excited about.
This is where the Marshall London differs. Operating on the most up-to-date flavor of Android operating system (Lollipop) with 4G and download speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s, it comes with two front-facing speakers (read: stereo sound quality) and features two separate audio jacks for simultaneous listening, allowing separate volume and equalizing controls. If you're into recording music and/or DJing, the London also has you covered, as the smartphone highlights dual microphones that are primed and ready for laying down riffs, as well as a DJ app that comes pre-installed. Familiar Android app Loopstack is also featured, allowing you to record four tracks independently.
Under the hood, the London is the only smartphone fitted with a separate dedicated hifi-grade sound card specifically for your tunes. The Cirrus Logic WM8281 means music gets its own dedicated processor. This means uncompressed music files can be stored and played, which all equals better sound quality. It also has an 8-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing one, equipped with a unique removable battery and 16GB of internal storage that can easily expand to 128GB with a microSD card. Physical trim details match Marshall’s design language, with a dappled skin and brass accents on its chunky volume scroll wheel and the phone's signature ‘M’ button which gives you quick, one-button access to your music.
They were the audio masters when Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire and they're the amps of choice for Run-D.M.C., so if you're as serious about music as they are, check out the Marshall London now.