Obi Worldphone SF1 Review: Great mid-range hardware with spotty software

The re-branded Obi announced its Obi Worldphone SF1 and the SJ1.5 back in June with big plans and even bigger ambitions. Our review is on the more powerful offering, the 32GB variant of the Obi Worldphone SF1, that packs in the goods and enough punch to tackle seasoned mid-rangers considering its Rs 13,999 price tag. In our review we came across little or no problems with the smartphone that turned out to be quite a performer with only one drawback, software optimisation. And this is the sole reason why we waited for two software updates (one before and one after launch) before we jumped to write a full-fledged review. Build and Design: 8/10  This certainly is one factor where users can compare the SF1 to the current heavyweights of the industry and even the past ones like Nokia. Ex-Apple CEO, John Sculley had hired the design studio Ammunition, founded by Robert Brunner in 2007. It so happens that Brunner also was a former director of Industrial Design at Apple, so you may have a clue as to where certain design cues come from.  When the smartphone was first announced, the design was really impressive and so far it continues to impress with its mix of polycarbonate and metal. The smartphone sports two metal accents on the top and the bottom.  The top accent has a flat top and hosts the secondary mic and the 3.5mm headphone jack, while the bottom one is rounded and sports two speaker grilles (only the right one is functional) with the micro USB port in the center.  Oddly, we have your basic Android button set up on the left side of the device. This consists of the Volume buttons and the power/lock button. On the right side we have a SIM card slot which can host either two SIM cards or a SIM card and a microSD card for storage expansion.  On the front we have the raised screen made of Gorilla Glass 4 for protection along with a lipping to protect that smartphone’s display running all around the sides. Also visible on the front is the front-facing camera, proximity sensor, earpiece and the front facing flash. Around the back we simply have the primary camera coupled with a single LED flash along with the Obi branding at the bottom right.  The construction is flawless and many others who checked out the smartphone, thought that it costs a lot more that SF1’s current asking price. Coming to looks, the design is original, but it kept reminding us of what a mix of a Nokia Lumia 800 and an Apple iPhone 6 would look like. Features 7/10 There’s plenty of mid-range horsepower under the Obi Worldphone SF1’s hood. We have the tried and tested, octa-core, 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset coupled with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 32GB of internal storage, that is expandable upto 64GB via a microSD card slot. Coming to the display we get a 5-inch Full HD display sporting a pixel density of 443 ppi, something that only exists on the Xiaomi Mi 4i in this price range. The SF1 sports a 13MP AF primary camera on the back and a 5MP unit on the front, both of which are accompanied by single LED flash modules. The software package is mostly trimmed down and the SF1 sports a few customisations and a couple of added features as well. The Lifespeed UI packs in few handy features like the ability to assign custom functions to buttons and other Smart Functions like Pick-up to Call, Flip to mute, Flip to speaker and even enable bottom notifications. Coming to the special features included in the camera, there’s UbiFocus, OptiZoom and Chroma Flash all of which can be found by tapping on the Auto button on the camera. There are the usual connectivity options including a dual SIM setup with 4G + 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. The other connectivity options inlcude Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Dual-Band, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP and A-GPS with GLONASS. Software: 6/10  Coming to the stuff that really matters. Lifespeed that runs atop Android 5.0.2 Lollipop is basically a skin that comes with nothing special apart from the theme functionality, which can also be turned off from the Display Settings.  We had a lot of expectations from Lifespeed, but sadly it is nothing more than a third-party launcher that hides some Cyanogen bits underneath (for a variety of reasons). While Obi confirmed that they have not used Cyanogen OS, but a firmware developed in-house, we could not help but notice that the File Manager, Messaging apps come from Cyanogen. All said and done, the Obi Lifespeed UI style that can be turned off from Display under Settings does provide the device with a distinct look from the lockscreen down to the icons on the homescreen that are instantly recognisable and look unique. Talking about the lockscreen, we wish that it could have been able to display some notifications other than simply giving options to swipe to unlock (shown in the image above), to open the camera or the dialer app. Display: 7.5/10  Obi has included a great display on the SF1. It packs in a 5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display made by JDI, using in-cell IPS technology. The images and text look crisp at 443ppi , the viewing angles are great and frankly speaking, you will not get anything better with a higher pixel density in this price range. More importantly, the display remained scratch-free and did a great job at resisting smudges thanks to the Gorilla Glass 4 screen and the oleophobic coating over it. Another area that showcases the prowess of the display, is when you watch movies or play games. It remains bright and colours saturated both indoors and outdoors. This applies for the blacks as well, that show sufficient depth delivering a punch, while playing games and watching movies (especially in the dark scenes). Performance: 7.5/10 The audio performance of the Obi Worldphone SF1 is great. Call quality was good with the call volume on the earpiece speaker are loud and the mic is good; as callers on the other end could hear conversations loud and clear. The same can be said about the SF1’s loudspeaker, that is placed under the right side grille at the bottom end of the smartphone, it is sufficiently loud and does a fine job at what it is supposed to do. The SF1 scored pretty much in line with the rest of competition that sports a Snapdragon 615 chipset. But you also have to remember that the SF1 sports a Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display, which should take a toll on the GPU so you need to keep this in mind before you have a look at the scores. The hardware on board the SF1 delivered some commendable scores on benchmarks despite our worries about the software ruining the user experience. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 with the Adreno 405 GPU and 3GB of RAM passed off as a great combination and the deal looks even sweeter when you factor in the price tag.  In terms of gaming performance it was not up to the mark. While Real Racing 3 showed off plenty of detail, performance was stuttery at best with reduced frame rates that made the game almost unplayable. Casual games like Subway Surfer fared well (not without the occasional stutters) and strangely also managed to heat up the phone in a minute of gameplay. The phone heated up only during gaming, but this seems to be the case with every single game ran on the SF1. That said, the phone had no problems playing Full HD videos when it came to playback and the Dolby Audio enhancements did make a noticeable difference. The software that barely seems to be customised comes with its own strange set of problems. We have had the SF1 in our office for quite a while. Two small updates down, we have yet to see the Obi SF1 run apps or multi-tasking operations without a stutter. While most of the stuttering along with broken animations and transitions within apps may go unnoticed, accessing the recents menu and playing with rolodex style app switcher is where the stutter and lag cannot escape. It is clearly the lack of proper optimisation as the hardware is more than capable when it comes to running Android 5.0 Lollipop. Frankly speaking, the Yu Yunique , and the Moto G Turbo Edition that come with lesser hardware, runs Android a lot smoother than the SF1. Clearly, this is something that can be accomplished with a single update, but we have yet to see one that manages to make the UI buttery smooth like the competition. Camera: 6.5/10 The Obi Worldphone SF1 packs in plenty of punch in terms of hardware but falls a bit short in terms of execution. There is a 13MP AF primary unit on the back, while a 5MP unit up front for selfies. Selfie fans will indeed be happy with the SF1 as it sports a single LED flash unit both on the back and the front camera. Please note: Click on the images to see the high resolution uncompressed images. The 13MP rear camera is a Sony Exmor IMX214 Sensor with an f/2.0 aperture that delivers a sufficient amount of detail in daylight and low light captures. Obi has included three extra goodies in its camera software that inlcude, UbiFocus a dynamic focus mode, OptiZoom a multi-frame super-resolution photos that mimics an optical zoom and the colour-preserving Chroma Flash. Clearly, all of these are software tricks and while the OptiZoom and ChromaFlash mode proved their worth in daylight scenarios, the UbiFocus mode did not. Also not useful in the camera app was the HDR mode (result in the second image above) that made captures far worse by overexposing them, we obtained better results with tap for exposure in the normal auto mode. Apart from the above mentioned camera modes, you get the standard auto mode that does a great job and is quick to acquire focus and process an image thanks to the great hardware. Daylight shots are great and the engineers seemed to have managed to squeeze out a good amount of detail from the 13MP sensor. It was a hazy day while the clicking the above images so the details may appear to be a bit washed out. Low light shooting is the biggest drawback of the SF1’s camera. The images way too noisy and you can notice this even without zooming half way into the image. There is plenty of chroma noise upon closer inspection and this results in low-light images that are almost unusable. In short, the camera is good only for daylight images, so whatever your shoot in low-light better be close to the camera; close enough for both the front and rear flash to cover. The 5MP unit on the other hand did a great job in normal brightly lit scenarios and yes, the front-facing LED flash does help. Video recording at 1080p was pretty much spot-on and this can be said for both artificial and brightly light conditions. Battery Life: 7.5/10  With a 3000mAh battery inside, we did expect a lot from the Obi SF1 and to be frank the smartphone delivered. From continuously using WhatsApp for messaging to watching videos and playing casual games in between, the Obi SF1 will get you through a day, requiring you to plug in at the end of a work day if you connect more than two email accounts on sync. Excessive gaming with graphics options set to high, will drain this battery pretty quickly and this works more in favour of the high end 32GB model with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM to spare. We were not provided with a Quick Charger so we cannot comment on the Quickcharge 1.0 charging speed. Verdict and price in India The Obi Worldphone SF1 is indeed a contender that will check all the boxes off your budget/mid-range smartphone’s checklist. The device packs in a capable processor and plenty of RAM for a smartphone that is priced at Rs 13,999 (there is a more affordable offering with the 16GB storage and 2GB RAM offering). Obi has cherry-picked the right hardware bits for this smartphone and it even sports a unique design. But the SF1’s crux lies deep within with its stutter-laden and lag-happy software. If Obi manages to fix this in upcoming updates (there seemed to be minor improvements in the last one), there is very little apart from after-sales service to stop this smartphone from taking over the segment.  Its closest competitors right now are the Motorola Moto G 3rd gen (Snapdragon 410, 2GB RAM) at Rs 12,999, the Moto G Turbo Edition (Snapdragon 615, 2GB RAM) at Rs 14,499 and the Xiaomi Mi 4i (Snapdragon 615, 2GB RAM) at Rs 11,499. All of the above run exceptionally smooth with lesser hardware so it is all about badly optimised software that throttles the true potential of the SF1 for now. But for most buyers its not the hardware specs but the UI experience and smoothness that matters so Obi better get to fixing the software soon.