Obi Mobiles wants to take on the influx of affordable smartphones from the East in emerging and other markets with several devices named after, well, American cities San Jose and San Francisco. As expected, the two devices are aimed at the budget conscious and will go for under $200 and as per the page on the Obi website, will be going to just about any country in the Middle East, Africa and Asia when they become available in October. Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Pakistan, Turkey and India will be first in line to get the two devices.
The two devices, available under the Obi Worldphone brand will pack what can be deemed above average specifications and a steal when considering the price they are expected to go for.
The base model San Francisco (SF1) will pack a 5-inch full HD display, 13 and 5 megapixel cameras for the back and the front respectively, 16 gigabytes of internal storage (expandable via microSD), 2 GB RAM and a Snapdragon 615 processor. Obi will also be availing another model with more memory – 32 GB internal storage (expandable also) and 3 GB RAM. The difference between the two will obviously be the pricing. The 16 GB SF1 will go for $199 while the 32 GB version will go for $249. In addition, the SF1 will also have quick charging, Dolby Audio Surround 7.1 and 4G/LTE-ready.
The San Jose (SJ1) will be the lower specced of the two and it will pack a 5-inch HD display, a quad-core MediaTek processor, 16 GB internal storage (expandable), 1 GB RAM, 8 and 5 megapixel cameras on the back and the front. Unlike its more costly sibling, it will have support for just 3G networks. The SJ1 will go for $129.
Both devices will have 3,000 mAh battery units, dual SIM slots, as well as run on Android 5 Lollipop (5.0.1 on the SF1 and 5.1.1 on the SJ2. We expect most units of the SF1 to ship with 5.1 though).
