The Marshall London's 'David' update

-
I've been a huge fan of the Marshall London smartphone in the last couple of years. THE richest front facing speakers on any phone in the world still, by quite a margin. Stereo microphones that can record the loudest band. Grippy and durable outer skin that has never needed a case. Twin headphone jacks. Replaceable battery, the list goes on.

On the flip side, the chipset inside and screen specs aren't stellar and have been showing their age in recent times. These can't be helped, but a constant worry in terms of day to day use was lack of security, in that the Google Security patch level was back at June 2016 - and we call know how many vulnerabilities Android has had revealed since then.

Marshall seemed to have stopped updating this phone, but it seems as though they've merely been reorganising their support system and have now emerged from the darkness. In fact, there's a rather encouraging changelog. 
From the official post on the update:
2016 is now behind us and we have done a lot of work in the background to make sure we can bring out more firmware updates faster to your London. Thank you again for your patience & choosing the most rock&roll phone on the planet.
 We have added features requested by users as well as fixed most of the top-5 annoying bugs reported by owners.
  • 5MB email attachment limit has been increased to 20MB
  • Latest Google Services supported
  • You can now restart your phone from the power menu
  • Updated Equalizer service
  • Bug-fix: Location icon would display in notification bar even if disabled
  • Bug-fix: Incorrect suffix in Clock widget
  • Bug-fix: Network traffic icon alignment when active
  • Bug-fix: Lag in volume adjustment
  • Google Security Updates up to January 2017
  • ‘Quadrooter’ security exploit protection
  • Outdated ‘Android tips’ widget removed

  

Encouragingly, Marshall seems to be back on the ball in terms of keeping the London responsive too:
More optimization and user experience updates will be included in the next firmware update.
Great to see and I still go back to my beloved London in between review device testing and other 'diversions'!
PS. If you hadn't heard of the London before, it's here, though at a crazy placeholder price of £399.
PPS. See also my original full review of the London here on Android Beat.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wavelet - and better sounding speakers (and headphones) on Android...

-
Image
You may well be fairly happy with the audio output (speakers and headphones) on your existing Android phone. Or, like me, you may welcome an extra step up. Perhaps more bass/punch, clearer treble, or perhaps just a volume boost overall. Now, there have been various 'boost' utilities for Android in the past and they've been a bit patchy in how well they work. But Wavelet, discovered by Ted Salmon back in 2021, is a whole different kettle of fish, in that it works supremely well, with extra bass, clarity, and volume,   BUT has a very confusing interface. Which is why a brief tutorial is in order. The steps come from Ted in bullet point form, but expanded by me here and with screenshots, which will hopefully help. By the way, ignore the 'headphone specific' text in the app's title - it works perfectly well for speakers too. In fact, by definition, I'd say that it's really ONLY for speakers, since with headphones you've usually got plenty of natural i...
Read more

Bluetooth keyboard incorrect PIN or password - SOLVED

-
Image
Just in case this helps anyone else, I had a nightmare today with my Bluetooth keyboard and my Android phone - but I used some common sense and found a geeky solution. In my case it was a ZTE Axon 7 running Lineage OS and a Microsoft Universal Folding Keyboard (UFK), but I suspect this cure will work for more general issues. The symptom was that when I tried to connect a previously paired keyboard I first of all got just the raw Bluetooth address shown and not the keyboard name. And then, when I tried connecting, I got an "incorrect PIN or password" error message. No chance to reenter a PIN and no amount of restarting keyboard or phone would fix it. The cure seemed to be to reset something in the phone's Bluetooth system, but what? The keyboard wasn't showing up as paired, so I couldn't 'forget' it. I tracked it down in the end. Settings, Apps, then 'Show system' on the '...' menu. Find and tap on 'Bluetooth extensions'....
Read more

Why the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max is better than the 15 Pro Max

-
Image
Forgive the click bait(y) title, but there's actual evidence here, I promise. Note that I did write an article before availability, putting forward worries and concerns , but I've now had hands-on to confirm a few things and report back.  Cased (of course, read the blooming' article!) Pro Maxes - 15 and 14 (with XtremeSkin, Aged Oak , in case you're wondering!) In fact, it's the first time ever in the iPhone line-up/evolution that I seriously think the old 'Pro Max' model can be argued to be  better than the new one. (Admittedly, that I already own the old one [14 Pro Max] and didn't really want to spend over £1000 on the 15 Pro Max possibly helps my argument from a personal perspective.) (There's one big win for the new model, of course. Type C connectivity has been a long time coming - but this will take several generations to become established in iPhone/Lightning households and maybe I'll come back to this in a future article.) My observat...
Read more