Gadgetory

a phone by a popular music company looks to make audio the focus of an otherwise mid-range smartphone this is Josh regard from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the Marshall London we start off with the design which was fully created by Marshall itself and takes on quite a bit of the company's iconic looks Marshalls nice logo is down below at the 4.7 inch display just above one of the two front facing speakers and a white line outlines all the bits of the Front's before moving on to the sides this is where we feel the rubberized material that men you may know from Marshalls famous amps and speakers and it provides a great grip and feel for this phone on the right the power button is a little higher up on the body with a volume roller below it yes this is an analogue style dial that can be used for further functionality when pressed in and up top is the main draw of the Marshall 2 audio jacks that can be used for both recording and listening with a large circular Marshall button in the middle used in order to trigger the official music application and as we move to the back the rubberized material continues and also makes for removable backing underneath that backing are the micro SD and nano SIM card trace along with a replaceable battery which actually says on it long live rock and roll all in all we enjoy how unique the design of the Marshall London is the Marshall has done a great job in translating their iconic amp designs into the smartphone world and with a 4.7 inch display handling is about as good as it can get even if the screen is a little smaller additions of the front facing speakers add girth without making the phone harder to use in one hand the removable backing though is a little thinner and flimsier than we would like as it might be easily broken and it's latches could crack which would then make it unusable but small touches like the volume dial make it clear that Marshall wanted you to know that they made this phone and it truly shows a 4.7 inch IPS display comes in at 720p resolution for the Marshall London and it is the first sign of the phone's decidedly mid-range specifications that said it isn't a bad display by any means but it is important to know that it's not meant to be a flagship competitor especially when at its highest brightness the display shows a noticeable warm hue over everything making the white areas look a little more taupe the brightness makes the screen more readable in broad daylight but it actually isn't as bright as other IPS displays that we've seen and with the lower resolution in some places like text are definitely lower here compared to any 1080p displays that said we don't think that 720 is at all terrible for typical daily usage is just considered the lowest tier display experience now this mid to low range trend continues in a performance aspect as we have the Snapdragon 410 at the helm backed by the audrina 306 and two gigabytes of RAM it should already be expected that this processing package will not bring the snappiest or even the smoothest performance and this has definitely been the case with us even going through the general UI stutters and small bits of lag or common we do think that with the lower specifications all around though the Snapdragon 410 is able to perform as well as it possibly can without being stretched by things like a full HD display but higher demand tasks like games brought expected issues with long load times and periodic crashes for typical tasks we were able to get work and some play done but we needed to get used to the time at might end up taking to just open the app or even just do the job that it needs to do a mostly stock like Android gets some of the credit for the bit of speed that we do feel here as Marshall doesn't try too hard to make Android overtly different that it slows it down too much but even then you should just know that you're getting some mid to low tier performance out of the Marshall London and in Hardware the main component is the audio but we'll get to that in a little bit we start off with the removable back and what is underneath it a micro SD card slot mainly this means that the 16 gigabytes of on-board storage can be bolstered and thus all of your high quality audio files will have a place to stay when the phone is too full the battery is a twenty five hundred million power unit which is a good capacity when you consider the lower overall specifications and it actually works quite well one of the best days that we had with the Marshall London though it was a little bit rare was an almost four hour screen on time that was used over the course of a 14 hour day couple that with the fact that the battery is replaceable and you can find that this phone can go the distance NFC is missing from the connection suite but there is also one other thing to remember about this phone it is currently not made for the Americas and must be imported and that means that mobile data connections will be on HSPA+ for GSM networks here in the United States so if you're going to buy this phone abroad just know that LTE connectivity won't be possible when you make it back home which brings us to audio starting off with the front-facing speakers which work really well marshall manages to not only make a stereo setup but they also gave the audio a good amount of body and thus we didn't feel the need to get the headphones out for gaming or even when sharing videos on YouTube with friends which is always nice and finally we go to the headphone jacks up top yes this phone allows for full-on sharing of audio and music with a friend using the built-in cirrus logic sound card that provides full connectivity to both jacks if you do indeed have someone to share your music with this ensures that both people will get the highest quality possible-- including independent volume controls one quick thing though I am no musician which means that the recording aspect of this phone wasn't something that would be used by someone like me the Marshall app does afford users control over how the audio sounds whether in the speakers or in the headphones and it does a great job the settings in the equalizer pretty dramatically changed what is already a very warm sounding sound stage that is evened out at first but then is easily manipulated if you want more low-end bass for hip-hop for example or higher-end peaks for things like dialog so in all respects the audio experience in the marshall is great and robust definitely in line with the history of the company itself it will be even better if you put some lossless audio on here like flag files to fully take advantage of the audio card built into the phone but even then you will have a great time enjoying music more so if you have someone to share them with the camera of the Marshall London is an 8 megapixel shooter with a 2 megapixel front-facing companion and it falls in line with all of the lower specifications that we found outside of the audio experience the app uses the general google camera and that means Lens Blur photosphere and HDR shooting are all available but it doesn't add toward us otherwise a lackluster picture-taking experience shooting what the camera does take a bit of time which shots sometimes taking a solid second to finish capturing especially if you have HDR on and it shows in the actual pictures which are all fairly washed out without capturing enough detail to make the pictures even look sharp color reproduction is actually pretty good but that's about it because there is a bit of punch added into the colors but overall we didn't find too many great photos unless we were in very highly lit situations if you are a social media picture taker this might be best considered as a bare minimum camera experience to capture memories it can get the job done but it's certainly no overachiever and finally in software we have Marshall at the helm of what is mostly a stock version of Android Marshall focused on making specific applications that add into the experience rather than changing the core there are a couple little additions like the power up and down animations and a very nice guitar rift that is used for notifications lollipop then brings the tip homescreens app drawer and notification drop-down with the quick settings panel marshals applications include the dedicated audio app which we already mentioned is where the equalizer can be changed for a better audio experience but it is also able to tap into various music apps like Spotify and Google Play music making itself the way to control these applications in the beginning we actually had issues with this app working properly but after an application update from the Play Store it now works pretty flawlessly and even a loop stack is available for anyone who wants to make their own music load music and sound effects into the stack and a bit of tinkering can make a pretty nice beats but like I said I'm no musician from more robust experience in creating beats there is actually a full-on DJ application included but finally Marshall even put in a quirky little video game called rockabilly Bros where you manage a band and the venue that they play at all in all we really liked that marshal kept Android about a stalk as they could make it with additions in the form of applications that are then updated from the Play Store it not only keeps the Android iteration as smooth as it can be given the spec circumstances but the added applications provide enough layers to the experience that are quintessentially Marshalls style the Marshall London is available in the UK and further parts of Europe for prices that translate to roughly 499 dollars or even more which is actually the projected price for the phone when it becomes available in the United States currently there is only an email alert in place in which Marshall will tell you when the London is finally coming stateside what happens when an audio company decides to dive into the world of smartphones well since the Android world is so saturated in the cost of making a mid-range smartphone might not actually be that high it doesn't surprise us that companies are able to specialize for Marshall Audio is their obvious focus and it shows in the London sharing the music experience with a friend is one thing but having even further control over the audio experience through equalizers and even the recording and creation apps makes the London a benchmark for phones that are made for audio files but regular Android users are in a different space for a phone that is basically a niche product they had to cut corners and basically every other aspect and that means that general Android users might not find the London as a worthy daily companion and that's the main problem here Marshall took a generic otherwise Android phone and put their stamp on the design and then put their audio prowess to work but that just won't be enough to put this phone in the hands of more than a select group of users especially when considering the price don't get us wrong we absolutely love what Marshall has done here but hopefully a follow up will improve the aspects that truly matter to the Android faithful on top of where they've already succeeded greatly as always thank you guys very much for watching I hope you enjoyed this review of the Marshall London I know a lot of you guys were requesting it after my unboxing and we got really busy but before I went on my extended break I wanted to make sure to get this for review out to you as not really much of an audio file I can still enjoy just how great the quality is from the audio in this phone but for general Android users it just might not be a very good companion for daily usage that said you can keep it tuned here for this and even more from my colleagues in Android over on the side and you can install the Android authority app so that you can get all of our content and when you're 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