Obi Worldphone is a company founded by the famous John Scully, ex-CEO of Apple and probably named after a Star Wars character Obi Wan Kenobi master. The company is based out of California, USA. Obi introduced their first mobile a few years back and then they went back to their drawing boards for while. Now Obi Worldphone is back in business with Obi Worldphone SF1. The SF in SF1 stands for San Francisco as the mobile was designed in San Francisco. Obviously the mobile is manufactured in China, but it is designed by California-based Ammunition groups. Ammunition designed the product, UI, packaging and also the marketing materials for Obi SF1.

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In the Box

The Obi SF1 comes in a unique packaging. It is packed in a transparent acrylic plastic box and emulates a premium device like an iPod touch. Inside the packaging is the Obi SF1 secured in place with rubber bushings. Opening the box would reveal the 2A charger and the USB data cable along with some instruction material. Check out the unboxing video.

Design

The Obi SF1 is a design centric device. A lot of thought has been put into designing this mobile. It is designed for ergonomic convenience and aesthetic appeal. It has a metal body all around but it is not slippery because of the matte finish on the carbon colored body. The top and bottom are differently colored metal, but it’s still metal. Also the physical buttons are made of metal. The volume button and the power button are both placed on the left which is a bit unconventional. The buttons are flush with the body and at times it becomes difficult to search for the button by feeling the sides. The buttons have good mechanical feedback, but you may need to press deeper as it sits flush with the body. The Speaker grills at the bottom has a single speaker. The 3.5 mm audio jack is at the top along with a noise cancelling mic. The back has the 13 MP camera with a single LED flash. The front facing 5MP camera has a single LED flash. The back is sealed and houses the 3000 mAh battery.

The display is elevated from the body of the mobile by a few mili meters. The raised display is something we haven’t seen in any mobiles so far. The display is surrounded by a thin plastic casket to protect it. Also it is Corning Gorilla glass 4, so there is little to worry about breaking or damaging the display. Frankly I don’t see any value addition or better experience because of the raised display. The raised part near the earpiece presses against the ear lobes and it irritates while on long calls.

The mobile supports dual 4G SIM cards (Micro and Nano). If you wish to expand the memory, it can be done by swapping the second nano SIM card with a microSD card. The SIM tray is on the left and it can be ejected with a sim pin. Overall the mobile is sturdily built. Shiny or glossy finish would not only render mobile slippery but on a long run the signs of wear and tear would be visible. But the SF1 is designed to look good from day one and to last for a long time.

Display

The 5 inch in-cell IPS display panel is manufactured by JDI and it supports Full HD resolution. It is a fully laminated one glass solution with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection. The quality of the display is good. The ambient light sensor is not calibrated correctly and I had to manually adjust the brightness of the display. The color reproduction is natural and fairly accurate. Touch is very responsive and I don’t find anything to complain about the display quality. It is just right for the price paid.

Hardware and Performance

The Obi SF1 come in two variants: 16 GB internal storage with 2 GB RAM and 32 GB internal storage with 3 GB RAM. My review unit is a 16 GB variant. But both the variants are powered by Qualcomm® MSM8939 Snapdragon™ 615 64-bit Octa-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz. It has Adreno 405 GPU. During my review period, I practically threw in over 50 apps and games. I filled the internal memory to the brim and also used a 32 GB SanDisk ultra memory card for videos and music. The mobile handled it with ease. Some apps did crash occasionally, but that’s because of network issue and more to do with the apps than the device’s capability. I played some graphic intensive games and the mobile showed no signs of frame drop or lag. The heat was also within acceptable limits. Just to re-iterate, I was testing with the 2GB RAM variant and still the performance on this mobile was commendable.

Also the mobile has Obi LifeSpeed UI skinned on top. This UI has a lot of unnecessary animations for all the micro interactions. The UI was very laggy and the animation was slow enough to frustrate me. I immediately installed Google Now Launcher and was much relieved with the usual launcher experience. Obi SF1 does have the option to emulate native android experience, instead of LifeSpeed, yet it was laggy and I prefered a 3rd party launcher on the mobile for a better snappier experience.

The inbuilt speakers were good, though mono. There is another feature to be highlighted in the SF1. It supports Dolby multichannel audio. The effect of Dolby is best experienced when the mobile is connected with a high-end speaker system or a good quality headphone. It doesn’t make any difference in quality on the inbuilt speakers, except that the volume appears amplified. The channel separation, quality and depth of audio is best experienced with worthy speakers.

Software

Obi SF1 runs on Android 5.0.2 with Obi LifeSpeed UI skinned on the top and as I mentioned the performance of the UI was not so pleasing. The lag is noticed while opening every single app, be it native or downloaded. Unwanted animations cannot be turned off. The the UI can be made to look like traditional android UI, it still has the lag. That makes me “not-a-big-fan” of the Obi LifeSpeed UI. I hope Obi fixes the issue with software updates.

Camera

Obi SF1 has a 13 MP primary camera and a 5 MP self portrait snapper. The front camera may be just 5 MP, but it is truly impressive. The details it captures in daylight, I have not seen even in some high end self portrait oriented mobiles. It also has a single LED flash for the front camera. It has a plethora of features including face detection, red-eye reduction, skin smoothing, etc… But under low light, using flash or not, sharpening algorithm is applied and the images are not naturally sharp. Otherwise the colors are natural and brightness and contrast levels are decent enough for a good portrait.

The primary camera has some interesting features like the opti zoom for digitally enhanced zoom shots, refocus for shoot now and focus later, chroma flash for natural shots using flash. Apart from these IQ Camera features, the UI presents a bunch of presets for different shooting conditions. I found the auto mode to be good enough for most conditions. The images out of the camera have good sharpness under daylight and but under low light grains appear and the images are not of good quality. I prefer to use the Chroma flash feature under low light. It clicks two shots: one with flash and one without flash and then merges it to create a optimally exposed image.

To sum up, the camera in the Obi SF1 has interesting features and a great performer under ample light conditions.

Battery

The device is powered by a 3000 mAh Lithium Polymer battery and is equipped with quick charge 1.0. I didn’t get to test the quick charge feature, as my review unit didn’t have a charger in it. With a normal charger it takes about 2:45 hours to charge the battery. With a Quick Charger, it should definitely be faster. Also on a single charge, the device last for 24 hours of normal usage. It does not have wireless charging. If a device lasts for more than 24 hours, I would say that it has good battery.

Verdict

The Ob1 Worldphone SF1 is an interesting device and it looks different. It has a sturdy body construction and built to last long. The camera is good and the performance is commendable. It is priced rightly at Rs 11999 for the 16 GB version and Rs 13999 for the 32 GB version. The LifeSpeed UI is not fast enough and it is an achilles heel for the product. I installed a third party launcher and the device got snappier. The raised display does not add any value and I wish it had flat display for a smoother feel in the hand. If you are looking for a sturdy device with good performance under 15k, go for the 32 GB version of the Obi SF1. If you want a pretty looking device, then you can opt for the Vibe S1 or the OnePlus X. If you want a better value for money, get the Coolpad Note 3, which is on our recommendation list. The Mi4i is also a good contendor, but the Obi SF1 is an interesting mobile and will make heads turn and people will definitely notice it in your hands. With that I leave you with a few images of the mobile and here is the link to register and buy the mobile.