It should be no surprise to anyone who knows anything about the recent and fabled history of Marshall Amplifiers that they are releasing a Smartphone. Marshall has been moving into the consumer product space for years selling everything from headphones to refrigerators.
The new Marshall Smartphone smartly named “The London” has all of the classic Marshall Amp trimmings. The Android based phone is black with traditional gold piping. At first blush it looks like a traditional Smartphone but there are some features that have the musician in mind. The Marshall Smartphone has two audio outputs allowing users to listen to recordings at the same time. No more sharing earwax and earbuds. The phone also boasts 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot. The people at Marshall know guitar players carry a lot of tunes on them. The 4.7-inch, 720p display and 8-megapixel camera are standard fare but all the same nice.
What Marshall needs to do next is make this phone a tool for the musician. A built in chromatic tuner would be nice as would be a decibel meter. If Marshall really wanted to go the extra step they would bundle the phone with some type of guitar interface device and a Marshall Amp app.
If Marshall really wanted to blow us away they could include a tone guide. A library of the most iconic Marshall tones over the years. Perry, Page, Walsh and Slash could all be included. The app could listen to you play a chord and show you with a Marshall based GUI which knobs you need to turn and to where to achieve the desired tones. Write that down, it is a freebie for you engineers at Marshall.
If Marshall could make all of this happen I will be running out the door for one of these babies. The London has a street date of August 21st and a price of roughly $600 on the European markets.
