Silicon Valley is the meeting place of world's most innovative technology and breath taking art. From the heart of the valley, Obi announces it’s unique range of smartphones under the master brand Obi Worldphone. Considering that the global legends like
John Sculley and
Robert Bruner of Apple fame have come together to envision, design, build and launch this range, we most certainly have to check Obi's flagship, the
Obi Worldphone SF1, where SF stands for San Francisco and number 1 represents the first in series. This flagship device of Obi Worldphone had its global launch in San Francisco followed by regional releases in East Asia (Vietnam, Thailand), Middle East (Dubai, Saudi Arabia) and lately in India as well.
In today’s hyper competitive smartphone market, the company claims that its mission is to bring beautifully designed, technologically superior smartphones, priced at an exceptional customer value. If this sounds like what you need, let's find out what this device really brings.
A design to stand out from the rest
With our phone becoming part of what we wear and carry, we also want it to reflect our unique style, choice and comfort. Even then, how easy is to discover and mould an original, unique design in a small utility device like smartphone? Well, Obi seems to have raised the bar here. A custom User Interface (UI) with original and authentic silhouettes as expected of Ammunition Group, where every detail and curve is carefully crafted to make the piece a class apart and instantly recognizable as Obi Worldphone.
Particularly, SF1 comes in the timeless classic black hue, with metallic accents and a unibody compose, with “Designed in San Fransisco” stamped right behind. The fiberglass-reinforced body has accents made of an alloy of Titanium and Aluminium. The High Young's module makes it less prone to bending. The premium of having an oleophobic, anti fingerprint and UV coating saves our time on keeping it new, clean and scratch free. It has an elevated floating screen experience, emphasizing on a more engaged interaction with what we see and do with our smartphone.
However, if you happen to be a smart, busy and, somewhat, clumsy person like me, your eyes would go looking for
strength and durability. Thankfully, SF1 is built with Corning Gorilla Glass (GG4), the toughest in category to protect the display (It is important to note here that even iPhone6 has CGG3). The raised screen is placed with a special gasket for protection. The architecture is such that the metal end plates at the top and bottom are more likely to hit the ground before the glass and they have been designed to take the impact, so that we are ready to take knocks better, and explore life in style!
SF1 comes with a rich and sharp display
With an eye for detail and expression, the smartphone screen gives a good 5 inch display, as is common and demanded in smartphones now a days. The dimensions are 146*74*8.1mm, giving it a sturdy look. The screen is equipped with High Definition (HD) 1080 X 1920 pixels, which means richer colour and sharper details with 443ppi in cell Display. To make you feel right in the middle of your movie experience, the device has Dolby 5.1 discreet channels of high fidelity surround sound. Having a secondary microphone helps in noise cancellation, so that you can communicate neat and be heard clear-cut no matter where you are.
A phone that runs on eight engines
Coming to the roots of the device, Obi’s SF1 processes on Qualcomm MSM8939 64 - bit Snapdragon 615 with 1.5 GHz Octa-core clock speed. This is a good speed, but there is more to it, especially considering that not only your smartphone should perform matching your pace but also save on power where you are taking it easy. Although the Snapdragon 615 is octa-core, it is not just eight cores. It is actually four fast (1.7GHz) plus four not-so-fast (1GHz) cores. As a result, the system shifts to the slower, less power-hungry, cores when there is no load, and back again smoothly when there is. The benefit is both performance and power saving. This is not yet common in smartphones, therefore, Obi’s SF1 sure comes with an advantage. The Adreno 405 GPU 64 bit in turn provides first class HD gaming experience due to its support for both 2D and 3D games, giving you both compatibility and performance. The phone operates on Google's, Android 5.02 (lollipop) software, hence all Google Play store supported applications run on Obi Worldphone.
SF1 comes loaded with softwares and storage choices
Beside Obi custom user interface, other
softwares include Swiftkey, Accuweather, Clean Master, MS Office, AVG Anti virus and a lot more to come! To support all these there is a well planned option for either 16GB internal storage with 2GB RAM or 32 GB internal storage with 3GB RAM. Along with this it has a micro SD slot for an expandable memory upto 64 GB, hence we are never short of space. The DDR3 RAM and eMMC 4.5 ROM is the fastest possible option for the given processor, plus 15GB cloud storage on Google. The quick charge feature in 3000 mAh battery power supports phone life for 20 days standby time, upto 28 hours talk-time, 10 hours video playback time and a delightful 100 hours of music playback.
A camera that is supported with authentic hardware
Most importantly, with 13 Mega Pixels rear camera, 5 Mega Pixels front camera with LED flash on both sides powered by Sony Exmor IMX214 Sensor, SF1 is actually a professional camera in the palm of your hand. Not only it ensures superb lowlight photos, but in high density resolution too. The f/2.0 Aperture allows a good amount of light to fall on the lens to capture a sharper image. One can capture a scene with everything in focus or refocus the image taken as it is never too late, zoom to read text, click photos in low light as layered flash will not ruin the photo's brightness, texture, color or take split second perfect focus even in the sun. Capturing RAW images always allows higher quality photo, as it does not compress the photo like in JPG, BMP etc. formats. Touch focus, face/smile detection, panorama HDR. Video 1080p@30fps, Ubifocus, Chrome flash and optical zoom assist us to capture timeless memories and selfies, perfectly forever.
SF1 covers most of the networks
The network reach and communication features GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) /WCDMA (850/900/1800/1900 Mhz)/HSPA+ /4G LTE (FOD B3 1800 MHz and TDD B40 2300 MHz). The device supports Dual SIM (Micro and Nano, WLAN direct Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Dual band. Blutooth (v4.0 A2DP) and GPS with GLONASS. GLONASS is known to provide faster and accurate fixes, especially in EMEA, Asia and North America. The phone comes with a custom designed charger and a micro USB data cable (v2.0) to connect further. The brand upholds a standard one-year warranty in most markets. The phones are built by CK Telecom Limited, a leading mobile phone ODM/OEM provider in Heyuan, China.
Obi Worldphone SF1 takes smartphone experience to next level
Ammunition has designed Obi Worldphone from concept to completion. SF1’s industrial design, user interface (UI), superior features and packaging, everything is aimed at user experience, as if this stylish device is built to bring out the connection between the smartphone and its owner. With this combination of beauty and power, Obi aims to serve customers around the world. However, the most interesting aspect is the price tag (App. USD200-250), which actually makes one think as if the company is tactically underrating the device, as if this beauty deserved to cost more. Moreover, Obi promises to push the limits of smartphone experience by working to bring in more softwares and plans to sell its own line of accessories soon.
Well, SF1 most certainly brings some fresh air of Silicon Valley in the global smartphone market in terms of class, originality, display, camera, sound and battery life at an exceptional price. With its mission to fuel the dreams of those young and upbeat, we see every reason that the device would be able to attract attention across the markets. On the whole, to the great customer delight, Obi Worldphone SF1 seems to have raised the overall quality bar for the price point it comes in.
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