Obi Worldphone Launches The Worldphone SF1 and SJ1.5

Today Obi Worldphone, the smartphone company co-founded by former CEO of Apple and former president of Pepsi John Sculley, launched two new smartphones targeted at emerging markets. The first of the new phones has two SKUs, which allows the devices to target three different price points in the low-end and mid-range sections of the smartphone market. You can check out the specifications of both new smartphones in the chart below.

As you can see, the Worldphone SJ1.5 targets the low end of the smartphone market, while the SF1 is a mid-range device. I personally think the SJ1.5 might have trouble competing with Motorola’s Moto E in regions where there is LTE coverage, but it does offer a larger, higher resolution display, as well as a very large battery and dual-SIM slot support which is very important for customers in emerging markets. Unsurprisingly, the SJ1.5 has a polycarbonate chassis, although the specifications for it indicate that it uses a magnesium-titanium alloy inside for support.

In my opinion, the more interesting of these two devices is the Worldphone SF1. The SF1’s chassis is made of reinforced fiberglass, and despite its 11.4Wh battery is only 8mm thick. In many ways, it reminds me of the OnePlus One in how it offers some high quality specifications at a low price. For $199 you get 2GB of RAM, 16GB of NAND, a 1080p display, Sony’s IMX214 camera sensor, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 SoC. Moving up to $249 gets you an additional gigabyte of RAM, and doubles your storage to 32GB. At least on paper, the Worldphone SF1 appears to give you more for your money than a phone like the Moto G, and it could have a significant impact when it launches in the EMIEA region in the near future.

The design of both the SF1 and the SJ1.5 reminds me a lot of the older Nokia Lumia smartphones like the Lumia 800, although there are a number of differences that give them a distinct appearance. I’m actually interested in trying one of these new devices to see how they feel in the hand and whether they live up to the expectations created by their specifications on paper. Obi Worldphone’s listed specifications do have some oddities, such as the Worldphone SF1 launching with Android 5.0.2 while the SJ1.5 launches with Android 5.1. It’s not clear if there are some errors or if the devices really will ship with two different versions of Android at launch.

Both the Worldphone SF1 and Worldphone SJ1.5 will be launching in the near future at both online and physical retailers in countries including but not limited to Vietnam, India, Tukey, Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. The Worldphone SF1 is priced at $199 and $249 USD depending on the model you purchase, while the Worldphone SJ1.5 will be $129.

Obi Worldphone via Engadget

Microsoft Makes Cortana For Android Available As A Public Beta

Earlier this year Microsoft announced that their digital assistant Cortana would be making its way to iOS and Android in addition to its launch on Windows Phone and Windows 10. Today Microsoft opened the public beta for Cortana on Android, allowing users to use the same digital assistant on their Android smartphones and tablets as the one on their Windows 10 computers

Because of Android’s ability to choose what applications are used for certain tasks, users can alter the long press of their device’s home button to trigger Cortana instead of Google Now. As of right now, Cortana on Android has a similar interface and functionality to its Windows counterpart, but at this point in the beta there’s no way to use Cortana to toggle settings, launch apps, or to activate Cortana itself by saying “Hey Cortana.”

Users interested in trying the public beta for Cortana on Android can use this link to become a beta tester.

The Moto G (2015) Review

Motorola’s original Moto G was one of the first Android devices to offer what one could honestly call a good user experience at a price of around $200. It had a 4.5″ 720p display, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 400 SoC, a 5MP rear camera, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of memory. Since that time, Motorola has adopted a structure where their Moto E fills in the sub $150 range, the Moto G hovers around $200, and the Moto X acts as a several hundred dollar flagship device, although the dual Moto X launch for 2015 changes this slightly. In early 2014 we saw Motorola refresh the Moto G with support for LTE, and later in the year they did a more major refresh which bumped the display size to 5″, the camera resolution to 8MP, and added the microSD slot from the LTE model of the original version.

While Motorola’s 2014 refresh of the Moto G was technically a major update as far as their yearly cadence was concerned, many aspects of the phone remained the same. There was no change to the SoC or the amount of RAM, no change to the display resolution or connectivity, and no change to battery capacity. The early 2015 launch of the Moto E made things even stranger, as it shipped with some specifications that actually outclassed the Moto G, such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 SoC. This put Motorola in a strange situation, which has finally been resolved with the new 2015 model of the Moto G. In my view, this is the first truly major update that the phone has seen since the original version, and you can see what improvements Motorola has made to their new mid range smartphone.