[rwp-review id=”0″]
The two weeks I spent reviewing the Obi SF1 were quite memorable. And that’s because a week into using it I was forced to switch away from it in order to function. While it does have a great price at around AED 750 (for the 32 GB version), it’s still a budget phone and comes with the many limiting factors that make one.
Design
The Obi measures at 146*74*8 mm, with a “floating display” raised at 0.2 mm that encases a 5-inch IPS display letting it easily slide into and out your pocket, something I doubted could smoothly happen due to the raised display. The unibody that has metallic accents weighs in at a 147 g. While numbers and statistics are nice, in the end the design begs for something else. While using the SF1 in Abu Dhabi the other week a friend commented on its appearance, “who thought that looked great?” Indeed the SF1 looks like the illegitimate child of an iPod and a block of aluminum; while a “floating display” does sound futuristic, it just makes the oddities of the design stand out, and not in a favourable way. The raised display is of course the eye grabber but so are the rounded sides and bottom which seem at odds with flat top of the smartphone. In fact when holding the SF1 you being to realise how much space seems wasted away both above, below and to the sides of the screen.
“The SF1 looks like the illegitimate child of an iPod and a block of aluminium”
The rear-facing camera on the Obi SF1 is located near the top left corner of the phone, placed just above the LED flash. The 3.5 mm audio jack is located on the top face of the smartphone, towards the left side whilst the micro-USB port is on the bottom face, situated between the speaker outlets. The volume rocker and power/lock button are placed on the left side of the smartphone and near the top which, if you’re right-handed, can be a bit awkward when you try to take screenshots. Again the curved sides feel at odds when you reach the top of the SF1 where the face is flat, with no smooth bevelling.
The outline of the backcover is visible, even though it isn’t removable, making me wonder why attention is drawn to it; most other phones without a removable back cover just have a smooth back, with the grooves only at the sides. The dual SIM compartment is on the right side of the phone and can house a microSIM as well as NanoSIM/Micro SD card.
Display
The Obi SF1 uses a 5-inch Full HD IPS display at a 1920 x 1080 p resolution which amounts to 443 pixels per inch (PPI). A sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass 4 covers the display with an oleophobic coating on top of it, ensuring you never leave and grimy fingerprints on the display. Compared to my Honor 7 I barely if ever had to clean the screen as blemishes would only be left behind if I forcefully dragged my thumb across the surface. Viewing angles on the Obi SF1 are fantastic though reflections naturally become a problem after tilting it past a certain degree. Colours are vibrant thanks to the IPS display and so is the contrast, resulting in crisp images
Camera
The camera on the SF1 was surprisingly great, even though it only has a measly 10 megapixels to its name. A barrel full of different capture modes comes along with the camera software, and whilst I wasn’t able to test them all, the ones I did use did prove to alter and enhance a picture. You’re also given the opportunity to tinker with a whole host of other settings, from contrast levels to sharpness to saturation to exposure. However the annoying part is that all these options are hidden away in a side menu meaning you’ll waste a precious few seconds opening, tinkering with settings and then closing the menu before you have a chance to take a picture. A panorama mode complements the default picture mode whilst the video mode lets you take 30 FPS 1080p videos.
The front facing camera is quite the let down, at only 4 megapixels, giving some slightly choppy pictures.
Performance
Here’s where it becomes incredibly noticeable that this phone is indeed a budget smartphone. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor powers the SF1 with 3 GB worth of ram letting it run apps; however nearly 1 GB was always in constant use during my test run with the SF1. The 615’s Adreno 405 GPU served as the graphics renderer.
In general usage I found the SF1 to be quite laggy. Switching in between applications was a chore and quite often an application would just freeze up and crash; this happened most frequently when swapping between filters on Snapchat. Opening up an application can take a few seconds and there is visible stuttering when minimising an app, or when switching to and from fullscreen YouTube videos. When running it through the AnTuTu Benchmark app I feared the SF1 would freeze up due to the amount of lag it experienced during the 3D rendering test. The results are expected with it earning a meagre score of 24,731. Gaming-wise, I often experienced lag and stutters whilst playing Dungeon Hunter 5.
“Quite laggy with a lot of stuttering”
Sound wise, the Obi SF1 is given a boon in the form of the Dolby Audio enhancement as it does quite a phenomenal job in boosting the volume whilst not sacrificing quality. Switching between the different modes provided a subtle but noticeable difference that helped boost audio quality.
Charging the Obi Sf1 is surprisingly quick, thanks due to the Quick Charge technology implemented in the software; I was able to get from 17% to 56% after only 25 minutes of charging which was blessing as I had to run. The 3000mAH battery itself can have the phone last for about 18 hours with medium to heavy usage before you need to find a place to plug the charger in. It scored 5925 on AnTuTu’s battery tester
Storage wise the SF1 comes in two variants, one of which is a 16GB variant (that comes with only 2 GB worth of RAM). I was testing out the 32GB version.
Software
Obi uses their own version of Android called Obi Lifespeed, a custom UI that runs Android Lollipop with it’s own sheen over it. For the most part however, it looks pretty much like a stock Android smartphone. There are very few stock apps, other than the usual plethora of Google ones (though Google Play Games wasn’t installed oddly enough), but there was the surprise addition of Microsoft Word and Excel. Thankfully, bloatware is nonexistent on this phone.
Final verdict
In the end I found the sound quality on the SF1, coupled with a great screen did prove it to be quite great for watching videos or listening to some tunes. The bloatware free and slimmed down UI also proved to be quite the plus in an age where you often get a smartphone with 40 different apps already preinstalled.
However for the price of AED 750, there are far more better budget phones out there in the market one could buy as the performance issues often rendered this smartphone unuseable. Furthermore the what I found was to be an unappealing design often made me stuff it back into my pocket lest I had to explain what became an almost too common question: “what on earth is that?”
