Listen up: Dolby Mobile coming to cell phones

Music lovers, rejoice: The audio gurus at Dolby Labs are taking aim at the dull, lifeless sound coming from your cell phone's music player.

Dolby just announced that it's bringing Dolby Mobile sound to upcoming, high-end LG handsets, with the first phones slated to arrive before the year is out. With any luck, other phone manufacturers will jump on the Dolby bandwagon in the near future.

Among the features that'll come in Dolby Mobile-equipped handsets: "Mobile Surround," which promises to deliver realistic-sounding surround effects over a headset; a "Sound Space Expander" for simulating a "wide, rich, and spacious soundstage" for music; a bass booster; a true graphic equalizer to replace the crude (or non-existent) EQ presets on most phones; and a "high-frequency enhancer" designed to bring out the high-end sonic details in your tunes.

Personally, I'm all for it. I've tried plenty of handsets with slick-looking media players but mediocre audio performance, so a new sound standard for mobile devices is a welcome development—and as a longtime Dolby fan, I'm anxious to hear what the SF-based audio shop can do on a cell phone.

One suggestion: The Dolby release specifies that Dolby Mobile will (initially at least) only be available on high-end multimedia phones. That's all well and good, but it would be great to get Dolby Mobile on mid-range music handsets as well, such as the Samsung Beat or the Motorola W755.

After all, the appeal of Dolby Stereo in the pre-Dolby Digital days was that it brought impressive sound to even the most humble of movie theaters, and I'd love to see that kind of ethic in the mobile market as well. Probably won't happen—manufacturers would probably prefer to save that "Dolby Mobile" bullet for their priciest phones—but hey, it should.

Related:
Press release [Dolby Labs]