Obi Worldphone SF1 Confirmed to Launch in India This Month

Obi Worldphone also announced that it launched the Obi Worldphone SF1 and Worldphone SJ1.5 recently in Vietnam and Dubai markets.

The Obi Worldphone SF1 smartphone went on sale last month in two variants - a 2GB RAM and 16GB inbuilt storage variant at a suggested retail price of $199 (approximately Rs. 13,000), and a 3GB RAM and 32GB storage variant available at $249 (approximately Rs. 16,500). The Obi Worldphone SJ1.5, on the other hand, was unveiled at a suggested retail price of $129 (approximately Rs. 8,500).

Announcing the company's plans, Neeraj Chauhan, Co-Founder and CEO of Obi Worldphone, said, "We plan to launch Obi Worldphone in India within this month and are committed to work relentlessly to enthral consumers with our innovations in design, state-of-the-art technology and high standards for manufacturing to deliver inspiring products that overturn the general assumption that great design has to come at a high price."

To recall, both the new Obi smartphones have been designed by San Francisco-based product studio Ammunition, which also developed Obi Lifespeed, a custom user interface based on Android. Obi at the global launch had stressed that the Worldphone-series would be addressing the "market need between high-design smartphones at high prices and generic smartphones at low prices".

For specifications, Obi Worldphone SF1 comes with 4G LTE and supports FDD B3 1800MHz and TDD B40 2300MHz bands. It features a unibody with metallic accents and floating glass display. The smartphone comes with a 5-inch JDI In-Cell IPS full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) display offering a pixel density of 443ppi. It also comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for screen protection. It runs Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with the Obi Lifespeed UI, and is powered by a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 (MSM8939) SoC clocked at 1.5GHz coupled with Adreno 405 GPU. The Obi Worldphone SF1 supports expandable storage via microSD card (up to 64GB).

The smartphone sports a 13-megapixel autofocus camera with LED Flash, Sony Exmor IMX214 sensor, and f/2.0 aperture. There is a 5-megapixel secondary front camera with LED flash also on board. The dual-SIM (Micro+Nano SIMs) based SF1 smartphone comes with dual mic for noise cancellation, Dolby Audio, and Quick Charge 1.0, for fast charging. It is backed by a 3000mAh battery and features an accelerometer, proximity sensor, gyroscope, and ambient light sensor. It measures 146x74x8mm and weighs 147 grams.

Disclosure: John Sculley's Inflexion Point is an investor in NDTV's Gadgets 360.