Obi Worldphone SF1 and SJ1.5: affordable Androids, premium design

John Sculley – former CEO of Pepsi and Apple – has gotten into the Android-phone game. The new company, Obi Worldphone, which aims to offer premium-designed phones to developing markets. Both are dual-SIM and cost between $130 and $250.

The Worldphones have launched in Vietnam, India, Tukey, Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. Others soon.

Obi Worldphone SF1

The higher end of the two phones, it has a 5" IPS screen with 1080p resolution. A "signature floating glass display" gives the front a distinct look (it's Gorilla Glass 4, by the way).

The Obi Worldphone SF1 runs Android 5.0.2 customized with the Obi Lifespeed user interface. The software is powered by a Snapdragon 615 chipset with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. That's the $200 version, for $250 you can have 3GB RAM and 32GB storage (both have microSD slots).

The phone boasts fast Cat. 4 LTE connectivity (it takes one micro and one nanoSIM), along with dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (2x2), Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS.




The 13MP camera (Sony IMX214) with an f/2.0 aperture shoots 1080p video and offers OptiZoom multi-frame super-resolution. There's a 5MP selfie camera with its own too.

The unibody features metallic accents and measures 146 x 74 x 8mm and weighs 147g, it has a generous 3,000mAh battery. By the way, SF stands for San Francisco.

Obi Worldphone SJ1.5

Despite the higher number, this is the more affordable of the two. The Obi Worldphone SJ1.5 is priced at $130 and also comes with a 5" IPS screen and dual-SIM connectivity.

The screen has 720p resolution though, while mobile data is capped at 3G (both card slots are microSIMs). That's backed by Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS.

You don't get a 32GB version, but the microSD slot should be enough. The SJ1.5 is also more modest when it comes to computing power – a MediaTek chipset with a quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM. It runs a newer version of Android though, v5.1.



The camera is an 8MP shooter (OmniVision sensor) with f/2.2 aperture. The selfie camera is the same 5MP shooter too.

The Obi Worldphone SJ1.5 (San Jose) features a Magnesium-Titanium alloy chassis covered in polycarbonate. The whole thing measures 146 x 73 x 8mm and weighs 131g. Like the SF1 it has a 3,000mAh battery.

Been wondering how they came about the name "obi". Any ideas