There was a time when speakers mattered, but the quality of audio has degraded with the digital revolution, said Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Beats by Dr. Dre and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, at the event.

By the time a song gets from an MP3 player, through a headset and into a person's ear, it loses a lot of sound quality.

"We have to bring the quality back," Iovine said.

Rezound takes some design cues from HTC's Droid Incredible smartphone line. It has a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and up to 32GB of storage. An 8-megapixel camera allows recording of video in full 1080p high-definition resolution. Battery life was not immediately available.

The smartphone will also ship with a custom pair of Beats headsets.