In 2015, OB Mobiles came in a new avatar, OB Worldphone. The company’s objective is still to introduce the budget handset in the Emerging Market, but this time more attention is being paid to user experience and esthetics. California’s Design Studios Emination has been given the responsibility of designing the phone and its UI.
Today we OB Worldphone SF1 Will review the company’s new flagship handset. Paper, the phone meets expectations. This time the OB has done so much work on the design so that it can create a distinct identity among the many smartphones of Android range.
Look and design
The design of SF1 is ‘choice or dislike’, that is, it will attract attention. The types of decisions taken regarding style can be called interesting. At first glance, the fusion of the smartphone iPod Touch and Microsoft Lumia devices appears. This mixture is slightly strange, but looks working. The display is slightly emerging. This does not provide any new function to the user, but manages to create a different identity. There is a protection of Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on the display.
The 5-inch full-HD IPS display is Crisp. Colors are shocked and sunlight legend is also fine. LED flash is present with a 5 -megapixel fixed focus camera above the screen.
The rest of the body is made of plastic, a 3.5 mm headset socket at the top. The hybrid sim slot is on the right side, while the volume and power button on the right side. The experience of using the button is not as luxurious.
Speaker grills and micro-USB are at the bottom of the port handset. Lumia -style body has been given a matte finish, due to which it is easy to hold it in the hands. The rear panel has a 13 -megapixel rear camera with LED flash. The 3000 mAh battery is completely sealed.
The SF1 comes with charger and USB cable. You will not get a headset in the box. OB Worldphone has done a good job on design and sathhetics this time, especially compared to the first handset. The design and design of SF1 is good and its size is also suitable for hands.
Specification and software
If it is specified, SF1 has made most of the correct decisions. You get an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset and Adreno 405 for graphics. You can choose between 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage or 2 GB RAM and 16 GB storage. You will also be able to use microSD cards up to 64 GB in the device. However, due to the hybrid SIM slot, you will be able to use the same SIM with microSD card. It has dual-band Wi-Fi B/G/N, Bluetooth 4.0, Dual-LTE, USB OTG, FM Radio and GPS connectivity features. The phone supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charges 1.0 feature.
The device out of box Android Lollipop (5.0.2) will run on OS. Custom skin OB Lifespeed has been used on top of this. There is not much difference between this skin and stock Android. If needed, the user has also been given the option to switch to stock Android launcher. You can also decide long-presh or double-repres action for home and physical buttons. OB has also given some other features, such as the option to pick up the phone on his own when Flip to Mute and Handset is taken close to the ear.
Apart from Google apps, OB has given many other productivity apps in this device.
We liked that SF1 does not have unwanted apps. For this reason you have more RAM available to use apps. Despite this, we saw deficiencies while using the interface. Whether it was multitasking or opening an app or any UI Emotion, the phone slowed down due to some reason. We could not get rid of this problem till the end. After switching to the stock launcher, this problem was slightly less but not completely over. We hope that it is a shortage of some type of software and it will end with updates. Or the company gives upgrade to Android Marshmallow.
Performance
If you release the UI shortcomings, the performance of the app is quite good. The credit goes to the powerful hardware. Gaming performance is good and intensive games like Dead Tiger 2 also run easily. The phone usually did not get too hot, except for charging and long -term video recording.
Talking about charging, with the help of the power adapter given by the company, you can get 27 percent power in your smartphone only 30 minutes. Call quality is also satisfactory. The ambientlight sensor takes longer time to react to occasionally.
Being a mid-range phone, the results of the benchmark test will be considered good.
The performance of SF1 in media playback is commendable. High-defense files run easily. Dolby is capable of improving the audio innience, volume and audio quality.
The 13 -megapixel camera takes good pictures in the daylight. Its focus is slightly larger, due to which there is a problem in locking the focus on the small subject in this app. Pictures of landscape come with details in good light. Colors are quite neutral. The pictures taken in low light are not very good, it has a lot of noise and it becomes more difficult to get sharp images.
The 5 megapixel front camera takes fine pictures. The interface of the camera is very simple and easily usable. You can run the camera in auto mode or there are many other modes. OB has added some new features to the IQ camera sub-section. Through Refocus, you can decide the focus point again in the photos taken earlier. This feature was not working properly for us.
You can also make changes according to your convenience in HDR, contrast, sharpness, white balance, ISO and burst mode. You will not be satisfied with the pictures taken in Panorama mode, because different photos do not appear to be related to each other properly. You will be able to record a video of 1080 pixels resolution and its quality is also very good. We wanted the option to control the focus in shooting mode. Apart from this, there is also no option for video stabilization.
The 3000 mAh battery video lasted for 9 hours 53 minutes in the video loop test. The phone battery in common use lasted easily for a day. We managed to use our handset the next day.
Our decision
OB Worldphone SF1’s 32 GB variant is available for Rs 14,000. As a full package, it is a great offer. It will draw your attention to your attention on the strength of good build quality, best battery life and audio quality. The camera works well, especially in daylight. A pleasant thing is that you also get quick charging feature in this mid-range phone. There are some areas in which SF1 needs to be improved. Especially in UI slowing down. Also in the performance of the camera in low light. We hope that the OB Worldphone will soon release the software update for SF1 so that users can take advantage of Android 5.1 Lollipop and the feature of the subsequent version.
It may be noted that the Gadgets is an exclusive retail partner of the Gadgets 360 OB Worldphone SF1. OB Worldphone owner John Skali’s company Inflexon Point has invested at NDTV’s Gadgets 360.