Marshall declares very fairly, very slowly, very costly smartphone

Marshall is one of the most recognized names in the pro audio market, with its guitar amps and speakers used the world over by musicians. But would you buy a Marshall smartphone? Today the company announced the "Marshall London," which takes the Marshall brand and design and crams it into a smartphone. Like Marshall-branded headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and refrigerators, this phone isn't built by the amp company—it just borrows the brand name.

The phone will first be released in "Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and the UK," but Marshall says it wants to bring the device to as many territories as possible. In Sweden it's listed at SEK4,995 ($583)—nearly flagship phone pricing—but the specs are pretty low end. You get a 4.7-inch 720p IPS LCD, a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, an 8MP camera, a removable 2500mAh battery, and a MicroSD slot. Those specs are in line with the $180 Moto G, and the $200 Xiaomi Mi 4i blows Marshall's hardware away. Yikes.

You do get a very pretty design, though. The London looks just like a Marshall amp, complete with a back panel that looks like Marshall's traditional vinyl skin. The software is stock Android 5.0.2 Lollipop (a version behind Google's latest) with "custom music apps."

Being Marshall-branded, sound is, of course, a big focus. There are two front-facing speakers (the ad copy claims the device "might just be the loudest mobile phone on Earth"), and two headphone jacks. The gold "M" button at the top isn't the power button, but a customizable app-launching button designed to give "one-click access" to your favorite music app. There is no volume rocker here; instead, the London has a rather unique physical scroll wheel for volume control. The audio is driven by a Wolfson WM8281 Audio Hub—Wolfson usually offers one of the better-sounding mobile audio solutions out there.

There are certainly better spec-for-dollar propositions out there, but it's nice to see a phone that places design first. We already have tons of spec-sheet monsters crammed into plastic boxes that seem like afterthoughts. If everyone's going to carry around a smartphone, we might as well start making unique-looking ones.