Obi Worldphone SF1 first look: A worthy mid-ranger designed in San Francisco

After a troubled past , Obi has re-branded itself to Obi Worldphone in August 2015, and revealed to the world two refreshingly new smartphone designs in the form of the Obi Worldphone SF1 and the Obi Worldphone SJ1.5 .

‘SF’ stands for San Francisco and this brings to mind a number of other companies and brands including Apple that have emerged from the same state. And talking about Apple, ex-Apple CEO John Sculley is also a co-founder of Obi Worldphone. And coming from Apple, you can expect the fit, finish and quality standards to be likewise.

The Obi Worldphone SF1 that we have received for review has plenty to show off. But you have to keep in mind the product’s target market, which according to its founders are users who want a premium smartphone with the performance to go, within restrictive budgets in emerging markets such as India and Africa. Here are our first impressions of the SF1.

Design and Build

When we got our first glimpse of the smartphone at the launch event, we found the design to be impressive. It sports a polycarbonate construction that almost feels like metal, while the top and bottom get an anodized aluminium finish that is actually made of metal.

The design is pretty minimalist and sports just two buttons, the power/unlock button and the volume control rocker (which can also be used as a shutter button when using the camera) on the left. On the right side, we have the SIM card tray slot that is a hybrid one, which accepts both a second SIM or a micro SD card slot.

Moving to the top we have a 3.5 mm earphone jack and a second microphone along with a plastic insert for the antenna bands. Around the rounded bottom, you will find the mini-USB charging port flanked by two speaker grilles out of which only one is functional, while the other is for aesthetic reasons.

The screen which has a noticeable lip, appears raised and includes a front facing camera and flash on either side of the receiver. On the back we have the rear camera and the LED flash that sit flush with the rest of the surface.

Display

The Obi SF1 sports a 5 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels, 443 ppi) JDI In-Cell, IPS display. The display is raised from the rest of the front face and uses Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4 screen for protection. It is a fully-laminated, OGS display that also comes with an oleophobic coating to avoid fingerprints (to a certain level).

Chipset RAM, Storage

Coming down to the stuff that matters to most buyers, the Obi Worldphone SF1 packs in a 1.5 GHz, 64-bit, octa-core Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 chipset. Obi has generously included 3 GB of DDR 3 RAM for the 32 GB model (2 GB for 16 GB) and allows for storage expansion, via the previously mentioned hybrid SIM slot.

Although the SF1 packs in some serious hardware, we noticed stuttering while browsing through the smartphone. This is more noticeable in on the homescreen than anywhere else but this could easily be resolved via a firmware update (more on this later). We also noticed that the smartphone got warm when we browsed some web pages or while playing games. We need to use it for a prolonged period of time while reviewing, to give a proper verdict on its performance.

Camera

The smartphone packs in a 13 MP Autofocus (Sony Exmor IMX214) with an f/2.0 aperture on the back and a 5 MP sensor up front; both of which are accompanied by an LED Flash.

In our initial tests of the primary camera’s quality was satisfactory at best but it tends to overexpose. Colour reproduction is great, but the camera presses for noise-free images, which lead to reduced details while zooming in. The camera software is barebones and we have plenty of hints as to where it comes from. Still then, it keeps things simple with all the options easily accessible when needed. The front facing camera does a satisfactory job and the flash does help in low light situations. Obi has thrown in a few more tricks like the Dynamic focus (UbiFocus) and colour preserving ChromaFlash, OptiZoom but we will talk more about them in our full review.

OS

Although Obi did focus on the LifeSpeed UI at launch, it seems to be limited to just the launcher and the homescreen. LifeSpeed (with Android 5.0 Lollipop) seems to deliver what can be accomplished by any third-party launcher (available from the Play Store) and as of now comes with few customisation options such as the ability to customise the use of the power button to end a call or answer a call using the home button. Also included are some gesture-based Smart Functions such as flip-to-mute.

While LifeSpeed was supposed to be a light UI, we noticed plenty of stutters while using the smartphone. This can be noticed even inside native and third-party apps so it’s more of a problem that could be fixed with a software update. Stutters aside, LifeSpeed seems to be using a file manager built by Cyanogen. The company however confirmed that software was built in house.

LifeSpeed also has an option to turn off the LifeSpeed UI theme (homescreen, icons, locksreen style). Heading into Settings and then into Display, I managed to simply turn off the LifeSpeed UI that lead to noticeable performance gain (the stuttering reduced drastically).

Battery

The 3000 mAh battery that the Obi packs is supported by Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 1.0 meaning that the battery does charge up quickly. We can only talk about real life battery usage after reviewing the phone.

Connectivity

On the connectivity front, Obi delivers with support for GSM, WCDMA and 4G LTE with support for Indian 4G bands. You get the dual SIM set up which is basically a hybrid SIM tray so you get a 1 micro SIM + 1 Nano SIM or 1 micro SIM + 1 microSD card set up. And then are the usual WiFi options including Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Dual-Band, Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP. The SF1 also packs in the standard A-GPS with GLONASS.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the Obi Worldphone SF1 packs in all that is needed to make it a worthy mid-ranger. Obi seems to have cherry picked the SF1’s internals and considering the build quality and unique design. Our initial impressions about the smartphone are pretty good, but we think you should hold on until our full review arrives.