The older of you may recall John Sculley, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs recruited before taking the head of the company between 1983 and 1993. Today, now it has launched another adventure. The Obi Company he co-founded last year has launched a new range of Android smartphones, the Obi Worldphone SF1 and SJ1.5 respectively expected to price $ 199 (16GB) / $ 249 (32 GB) and 129 dollars.
Of these two smartphones, we note first of all design, rather elegant and most original enough. The Obi Worldphone SF1 remains the more upscale of the two models. It is a team full HD 1080p 5-inch screen and a Snapdragon 615 processor supported by 2GB of RAM for the version with 16 GB of storage and 3GB of RAM for the version with 32 GB of storage. We also find a Sony 13 megapixel image sensor, a battery of 3000 mAh Audio and Dolby Audio Surround 7.1.
For its part, the Obi Worldphone SJ1.5 proposes a more modest configuration: Screen 5 inch 720p HD resolution, quad core MediaTek MT6580 processor with 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a battery of 3000 mAh, a back camera 8 Megapixels and a front camera of 5 megapixels. Each of the two terminals is dual SIM, which is not surprising since they are destined to emerging markets and runs Android Lollipop via an overlay rather original house named Lifespeed.
Low-cost smartphones that are far from low-end and provide, moreover, a really nice design that is reminiscent of the Nokia Lumia for SF1. John Sculley himself told Engadget that he did not compromise on the quality of its products despite their price positioning.
But that’s not all because Obi, which is still a small startup, intends to compete with major manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple or HTC, assuming that the size and the legacy of these large companies is a handicap in the current market.