John Sculley is a man of many talents – a recognised marketing expert, an investor in several high-tech startups, and the guy who left sales at a sugar-water company to change the world. But history will forever remember Sculley for his Steve Jobs connection – their unsavoury past that lead to Steve Jobs ousting from his own company.
After a troubled beginning with rebadging generic Chinese phones under its own name, Sculley-backed Obi Mobiles is back with the Obi Worldphone SF1, their first phone in India. It is different enough to be noticed in the sea of mid-range Android smartphones. But is merely being different, enough?
Key Specifications: Obi Worldphone SF1
- Display: 5-inch full HD 1080x1920p with Corning Gorilla Glass 4
- Processor: 1.5 GHz Octa-core Snapdragon 615
- RAM: 3GB
- Operating System: Android 5.0.2 (Lollipop) with Lightspeed UI
- Rear Camera: 13MP
- Front Camera: 5MP
- Battery: 3000mAh
- Price: Rs. 13,999 (32GB), Rs. 11,999 (16GB)
What’s Good?
It’s certainly hatke when it comes to design and aesthetics. Right from the clear acrylic box, reminiscent of the iPod touch of yore, that suspends the phone seemingly in mid-air, to the minimalist box contents (charger and USB cable, no headphones), the designed in San Francisco SF1 certainly makes a great first impression. Look deeper though, and there’s certainly a derivative quality about the phone design – a touch of the Mi3 around the top, machined iPhone-style speaker grille, an overall Lumia vibe, but it comes together cohesively in the final product.
The raised display helps the phone to stand out, although I have my fears about how this arguably unnecessary exposure would fare, should the phone ever meet the ground, face-first. Gorilla Glass 4 can only do so much.
The front of the SF1 is dominated by a 5-inch full-HD IPS display, which does a good job in terms of sharpness, contrast and colors, and there’s the oleophobic treatment so fingerprints are kept at bay, somewhat. Battery life too is a strength on the SF1, with the 3000 mAh battery lasting a full day of use – email-pulling, social-pinging, video-watching and all – plus there’s Quick Charge to juice up the battery in a jiff.
Worth mentioning is the audio quality on the SF1, with the Dolby enhancements via the Dolby Audio app discernibly changing the audio experience during games, music and movie, as long as you pair it with a good set of headphones.
Rounding out the specs is a competent Snapdragon 615 processor with 32GB storage and 3GB of RAM (a cheaper 16GB/2GB variant is also available), both allowing for 64 GB of expandable storage at the cost of the second SIM, courtesy its shared hybrid SIM slot. The Lifespeed UI running atop Android Lollipop 5.0.2 is bereft of unwanted bloatware too. It would seem like serious hardware for this price, except…
What’s Bad?
I noticed serious lags and stutters throughout the interface, whether you’re just browsing the phone to find the app you want or multitasking between apps. It points to a clear lack of optimisation between the hardware and software, and while this can quite easily be fixed by a software update, or an upgrade to Android 6.0, the software experience stands in stark contrast to the attention to detail that has been lavished on the phone in the design and packaging departments. That said, once you launch an app and it gets going, the experience isn’t particularly poor, but the everyday sluggishness is an issue you can’t ignore.
The camera takes satisfactory shots out and about – colours are natural, and detail is abundant though focusing is slow. But once the sun goes down, so does the SF1’s camera performance, and there’s plenty of image noise to deal with in low light situations. No image stabilization either, and while there are a few interesting camera modes (ReFocus, Chroma Flash, Opti Zoom), you really have to work them to get the desire results.
Why Buy It?
There’s much to like in the reasonably priced SF1 – tasteful design, good build quality, good audio and battery life. Even it’s Achilles Heel – the laggy interface – can be fixed via software, and if Obi takes some big strides and pushes out some quick software updates, the SF1 will earn our recommendation.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)