Marshall is making its own amp-themed smartphone

Marshall - a name synonymous with guitar riffs, crowd-sung vocals and baying sweat pits. It might strike you as odd then, that they're building a smartphone.

Part of the amp manfacturer's continued expansion into all things loud (they've been making headphones and portable speakers for a while now), the Marshall London is a smartphone that promises to put music at the centre of its design - and it looks (or rather sounds) the part.

Built in sponsored_longform with Finnish mobile studio Creoir, the Marshall London takes several design cues from their rugged amp cabinets: a jet black mock animal hide back, matched by gold-plated accessories. An 'M' button crowns the handset, giving instant access to the phone's in-built music app - which Marshall is billing as the phone's raison d'etre.

There's a separate processor for music playback (the Wolfson WM8281 Audio Hub, should that twist your knobs), along with nice touches like a global equaliser, dual microphones, a DJ app and a loop stack - all neat perks for music-minded users. 

In addition, it ships with numbers that would suggest the London will stand up as a versatile handset: running with the latest Android operating system, it sports an eight megapixel camera and a high-quality Bluetooth system to support advanced playback.

Set to arrive on 17 August, we'll let you know what we think of the Marshall London when we get to plug it in. 

And yes, the volume does go up to 11.